THE LARGER LIFE 



THE LARGER LIFE 



BY 




HENEY AUSTIN ADAMS, M.A. 

SOMETIME RECTOR OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PAUL 
BUFFALO, N. Y., AND THE CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER 
NEW YORK CITY 



NEW YORK 



07 C0A^> 

f s> 0CT 31 18 



J. SELWIN TAIT & SONS 




Tea Library 
op Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1893, by 
J. SELWIN TAIT & SONS 



TROW DIRECTORY 
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



Go 

MY FORMER PARISHIONERS 



PKEFACE. 



On July 11, 1893, I wrote to my Bishop 
announcing my renunciation of the minis- 
try, and requesting him to take the steps 
in such case provided by the Canons. 

Immediately thereafter I humbly sought 
admission to the Catholic Church, As 
might have been expected, so momentous 
a step — amounting to a virtual denial of 
my life's whole previous meaning — was 
fraught with most painful circumstances. 

From each of my former cures have 
come letters which it has been the saddest 
duty of my life to answer. The publica- 
tion of this volume is the reply to that 
which is the tenor of nearly all these let- 



viii 



PREFACE. 



ters — a spirit of regret that I should 
preach no more. 

My sermons were preached almost al- 
ways without notes. I cannot now recall 
a dozen of them clearly. It happens that 
the eight included in this book were taken 
down, and, almost immediately after their 
delivery, written for preservation in their 
present form. I am glad that this was 
so, because I could not possibly have 
chosen from the whole range of my teach- 
ing a theme so fully breathing my unceas- 
ing message. 

The attitude of the individual toward 
the unspeakable fact of Life ; — the prob- 
lem, " How can I realize myself ? " — and 
the need laid upon us all, at any cost, " to 
make for life," as it presents itself in 
truth to each of us : these were the bur- 
den of my preaching for ten years. 

The call which came to me so lately, 



PREFACE. 



ix 



and which God's grace enabled me to 
heed, is, therefore, not (in essence) in 
any sense a contradiction of my life and 
teaching. 

I send these sermons forth as my last 
word to all those dearly loved old friends 
who were content to search with me 
among the mysteries of life for Him who 
is our Peace. 

Whatever there may be in these few 
pages which is not true, I bitterly regret. 
That, as a whole, they are what I would 
wish men to believe, there is no doubt. 

May the " strong Son of God" bring 
every one of you into the largest Life. 



Your servant, 



Henry A. Adams. 



Que stoker Lodge, September, 1893. 




CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Larger Life, 1 

Who am I ? 27 

Rush, 51 

Rust, 73 

Tact, . . 95 

Contact, . 117 

Aims, . . 141 

Ends, 163 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



THE LARGER LIEE. 



tl I am come that they might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly." 

— S. John x. 10. 

Theee is a call to life in every age. 
There issues from the travail of all times 
a something to be done — done now. 

"When Yesterday is dead, its ghost — the 
Zeitgeist — comes and tries to be the in- 
spiration of To-day. If men give heed, 
To-morrow will rise up and say, " Well 
done ! " If not, the day, and they who 
make it, die disgraced, and life is turned 
into a lie in the deep heart of it, and its 
poor foolish soul will be that very night 
required of it. Read history! There is 



4 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



a call to life to-day, as there has ever been. 
There is a Zeitgeist here. There is that 
ever-present something to be done — done 
now : the doing it will settle once for all 
the claims To-day will have upon the ful- 
ness of the life eternal. What, then, may 
we consider is the peculiar call which 
comes for us? What is that something 
which — incidentally a part in all true liv- 
ing — has now become for us the dominant 
characteristic, the mark of life itself ? 

In the complexities of modern life can 
it be possible that any field of thought, or 
line of action, or sphere of opportunity 
can justly claim pre-eminence, and be in 
fact that crucial duty binding upon all men 
who would die crowned? No! but there 
is a quality which life in every reach of it 
must have to-day, or fail to that extent to 
which a man is said to fail who, having 
eyes, sees not. There is that in our life 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



5 



here, now, which done means larger life, 
growth, progress, crowns ; which left un- 
done means something less than life, and 
what is less than life is virtual death. It 
is, perhaps, the tendency of earnest men 
to magnify the thing at hand, to mar per- 
spective, to think what is more evil than 
what zoas, and to deride as a deforming 
feature of man's face to-day what really 
has been plainly seen there ever since 
Adam. 

" Old saws and modern instances " pro- 
vide conservative old age with proofs of 
the degeneration of the times, and some- 
thing morbid in us all leads us at times to 
coddle our poor selves into the martyr- 
spirit, which, having found "the times 
are out of joint," complacently and with 
exalted abnegation of ourselves, considers 
it no spite " that ever toe were born to 
set " things right ! 



6 



THE LARGER LIFE, 



But in the broad daylight of human 
life and action, which never can be dimmed 
by morbid moods nor made to feel the 
palsy of old age, there it is possible to 
see and know what should be done to-day, 
by us, here, now — which never has been 
done, never could have been done till 
now. It is the glory of every human 
life — let us believe this, if we must doubt 
all else — the crowning glory of your life 
and mine, that each is called upon, in 
the essential most profound of it, to be 
and do a something all its own. This fact 
that you are called upon to fill a special 
breach — that you mean somewhat by force 
of the mere singularity that makes you you 
— that you are called upon amid the soli- 
tudes where purposes are born to fight a 
fatal foe who would frustrate you by just 
such substitution of a conventional for 
your peculiar you — that you are called 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



7 



upon, untried and only half -believing, to 
turn from what has been, to make new prec- 
edents, reach ends and aims unique, at- 
tain your utmost best in ways unheard of 
—ah ! brothers, it is this that will forever 
crown your life, this that will make them 
say, " Here is a strong, true man who 
had to do what no one else could do, and 
did it." Such is a man's sole title to the 
life eternal. 

And as with individual lives, so like- 
wise is it with all times and ages. Crises 
arise. The undercurrents tell. Things 
yesterday thought fixed have broken up 
to-day. " The old order changes, giving 
place to new." Transitions terminate. 
Dreams crystallize into conditions. This 
happens — -then that happens. Much is 
brought about. Then suddenly a new day 
dawns. We feel, we see, we know it. 
Those who awake when that new day is 



8 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



dawning are first to hear the new name 
Life has found for duty in the night. The 
dull, self-centred masses learn the new 
name slowly ; but long before another 
night of change shall terminate this new 
day's new, peculiar duty, the whole world 
learns that life has, at the beating heart of 
it, a desperate, determining thing which 
must be done, on pain of death. The 
Zeitgeist whispers it to the enlightened 
conscience, flies myriad- winged from myr- 
iad presses, rumbles and roars amid the 
rush of commerce, fans flames of it where 
Science searches patient for the Truth, 
fills home with new deep-pulsing throbs of 
it — and, in one word, before the night can 
come, the Spirit of the Times, who is that 
oldest, best, true Light of Light, has 
flashed a broad white meaning over all 
things common, and men attain a clearer 
view of right. This is the witness of 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



9 



every age and movement : this the enno- 
bling, " the long result of time." 

And the new name which Life has given 
duty in our time — the time-thing which 
confronts the giant Century in this last 
decade of its splendid course — the one 
clear call to every man who is alive and 
thinks, is — larger life ! yes ! that we enter 
now, mind, soul, and body, into the larger 
life. The larger life : what do we mean 
by that ? Surely it is not new-born here, 
nor now — surely it has been always binding 
upon men, this duty to reach up, to grow, 
to know more truly. Yes, always ; but yet 
there is a sense in which the larger life is 
possible for us as it has never been before, 
and in this margin of our wider chance is 
always to be found the measure and the 
force of one's peculiar duty. We can 
know now and be what yesterday we could 
not ; and what we can, we must — or life, 



10 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



as far as it concerns ourselves, has failed. 
To fail by mere default, I know, seems 
never quite so terrible as History on every 
page has proved it. To not learn, or to 
not do, seems at the worst a pity ; but that 
default means death all over such a re- 
gion of the soul as it implies remains in- 
active, unproductive, God and our own 
heart tell us. 

It is more terrible to have capacity un- 
satisfied and powers unproven than to be 
small outright. This is that mortal thirst 
which overtakes the aimless, and parches 
all the freshness of a thoughtless life. 

This plausible default is the most subtle 
of the things which "can assault and hurt 
the soul," and this is true, for it is death 
alone which can reveal the wasting, unseen, 
life-long prostitution and decay of powers. 
A man learns much in that last desperate 
analysis of death. 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



11 



A million men, perhaps, are dying as 
we speak. Have they a message for us? 
Life is a serious matter with them now as 
they lie dying — more serious than it ap- 
pears to be with us, who could do some- 
thing with it if we would ! 

In this last agony and hour of it, 
what do these dying brothers tell us ? 
What seems to them the thirst unquench- 
able ? What in this mortal clearness of 
conviction and remorse appears to them to 
be the worm which gnaws their vitals and 
which dieth not ? Outrages, think you ? 
Sins, passionate outbursts of disobedience ? 
No ! but the things which they have left 
undone — these bite and brand the help- 
lessness of dying men. 

Therefore, to live to-day as if it were 
still yesterday — to use the knowledge which 
we have to the exclusion of that broader 
knowledge which we might have — to stere- 



12 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



otype ourselves at any stage — this would 
at any time have been default and led to 
death : to-day it is death ! because the age- 
word God is uttering, the heart-thing He 
would have us have is — larger life. 

He came that we might have life more 
abundantly. Never, of course, since then 
has any life had lack of opportunity to 
grow ; but there come times — three hun- 
dred years ago was one, to-day is one — 
when God says to mankind, " Come 
higher," and life, all life, becomes an uni- 
versal school, and the interrogation marks 
of receptivity displace the sleek, dogmatic 
periods of yesterday. If we have reasoned 
well, the Spirit of our day is the inspiring 
motive of the Gospel of the strong Son of 
God. The call to life turns out to be the 
old, old story. The very essence of the 
Gospel is — larger life. But it is certainly 
apparent that in the general estimation of 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



13 



the times the Church is openly regarded 
as a drag upon the wheels of progress. 
Her spirit, it is claimed is, and has al- 
ways been inimical to change, and change 
is but the postulate of all improvement. 

The Church may be endured, as certain 
liberals feel that the respectable old House 
of Lords may be endured a long time yet, 
like any doting crone who has outlived her 
usefulness and interest in practical affairs ; 
but hardly to be counted on for aid in any 
broad and liberal development of man. 

Again, it is quite true, though less ap- 
parent, that certain current views on 
Christian life, and certain phases of so- 
called Christian thinking, are fundament- 
ally incapable of being thrown into the 
true perspective of this larger life, so ut- 
terly impatient are they of anything that 
hints of other, wider, fuller revelations of 
the Truth than that which we now have. 



14 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



I. It would seem fair to judge a system 
by its founder's meaning — fairer than to 
condemn it because its advocates from 
time to time may have misunderstood or 
purposely perverted it. Now Christian- 
ity has suffered this injustice from the 
first. In His own Person our Lord Christ 
was made to suffer often for what men 
said of Him. In vain was His pathetic, 
frank appeal, "If I have spoken well, 
why smitest thou ? " And to this day — 
thanks very largely to the theologians — 
the world hears this, sees that, guesses 
worse still, has not sufficient time to judge 
amid the wrangling sects where Christ is 
truly preached, but has sufficient time to 
judge us by our fruits. And thus the 
heart-sick world goes on its way doing the 
best it can to stop the pain, to feed the 
hunger, and pay the bills — all this outside 
the Church of Him Who came that they 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



15 



might have life more abundantly ! If all 
the Christian churches in New York were 
filled there would remain in that one 
Christian city over a million people utterly 
outside. 

One merely has to name the living ques- 
tions which perplex the living, toiling, 
suffering masses of mankind to-day, to 
realize how mean a part is played in the 
true human tragedy by those who should 
be found assuaging every heart-throe of 
the souls of men. 

Save where some dilettante dabbling in 
social ethics displaces for a Sunday now 
and then the usual quite as dilettante essay 
upon Wagnerian motifs or Matthew Ar- 
nold, the pulpit everywhere maintains dis- 
creet indifference to the half-dozen ques- 
tions which are at all at issue. 

True, here and there, one with the very 
stamp of the Christ upon him, does try to 



10 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



preach an undiminished gospel, quivering 
with hate of wrong, but he soon loses caste 
among the Pharisees of the profession — 
at all events, zeal burns him up, and so 
an end of him: and peace returns, the 
churches are at rest, and men live on, 
and bear increasing burdens, and face un- 
taught the agonies of doubt, and tumble 
into broken-hearted graves before their 
time — a million in one town, outside the 
churches ! 

It behooves us, oh ! serious, earnest 
brothers, in a devouter, sterner way to 
ask if He Who loved all men and gave 
Himself for them, and Whom we love 
more than the life itself, has, or has not, a 
vital part to play in the tremendous move- 
ments of our day — to ask Him, eagerly, if 
He intends at this time to restore His 
kingly sway over forgotten and undiscov- 
ered reaches in the lives of men. The 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



17 



text gives answer wide and profound and 
royal : "I came that they might have life 
more abundantly." 

Such words involve divinity : from hu- 
man lips they were but blasphemous de- 
ceits ; from Him they are the pledge of 
help in every mortal crisis — the earnest of 
his appearing at a time like ours. 

rt He comes, the Spirit of a riper age, 
"When all that is not good nor true must die : 
When all that's bad in custom, false in creed, 
And all that makes the boor, but mars the man, 
Shall be forever done away. He comes ! " 

However much we may believe this to 

be true, faith, now of all times, without 

works is dead — twice dead and promptly 

plucked up by the roots, unless it yield 

fruit which is fit for food, or leaves, which 

an unsympathetic science will be compelled 

to see, are really "for the healing of the 

nations." 
2 



18 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



We feel that it is Jesus Christ Himself 
Who inspires this age and every upward 
movement made by men : we know that it 
was He Who first thrilled us with whispers 
of that word — a larger life. He is the Holy 
Zeitgeist of to-day. All search for truth, 
all thirst, all hunger, all restlessness in 
wrong, must come from Him. But, then, 
the world denies this. It makes uncom- 
fortable reference to mediaeval fagots and 
to modern creeds ; it sighs, " Poor Galileo ! " 
and chuckles in its sleeve at " the mistakes 
of Moses." But what of that? We have 
one argument which is alone convincing, 
and that is- — action. " Jerusalem which is 
above is free ; " let the Church militant on 
earth be free ! Free to take truth to any 
coign of vantage — to carry it into the thick 
of every human strife, even if in the getting 
■ there she has to crash through immemorial 
barriers of stiff convention, and shock 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



19 



the squeamish sensibilities of petticoated 
priests. The words and works of Jesus 
were co-extensive with the surrounding 
life as it appeared in actual colors to His 
all-seeing eye ; the Church deals only with 
a few of the real issues of the life around 
her; that is the difference between the 
Church and Jesus. All pain, all doubt, 
all work, all questions which concerned 
men's souls and bodies, found instant light 
and help in our Lord Christ. 

Let, then, the Church, heedless as He 
was heedless of contempt and death; 
dauntless as He was dauntless before all 
dangers ; faithful to Truth as He was faith- 
ful to it; strong, calm, determined, irre- 
sistible as He, let Her to-day take up His 
work — these vital, burning questions of the 
hour, and in His broad, sweet spirit, do 
what she can to solve them. Let the 
whole Church do this, and we shall see 



20 THE LARGER LIFE. 



the travail of Humanity will cease — " re- 
membering no more the anguish for joy " 
that Life has brought forth larger life, 
and that a man more worthy of the name 
is born into the world. 

II. That there has been a widening es- 
trangement between the Church and men, 
and that already earnest souls, covered with 
obloquy, are doing what they can — not very 
much nor wisely, ours the shame ! — but 
doing what they can to bring the Church 
back into loving touch with actual life in 
every horrible outrage and painful phase 
of it, most of us, probably, are willing to 
admit. But it remains for us now to con- 
sider how far the narrower conceptions of 
an earlier day hamper the else free action 
of the Church of God. The question gains 
importance from the fact that while — re- 
member this — that while most surely we, 
as individuals, cannot retard the whole, nor 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



21 



change to any sensible degree tlie ultimate 
result and sum of life, still, as we have but 
one brief life on earth — a life which we can 
radically make or mar — it does behoove us 
to inquire how far the narrowness around 
us hems us in. Briefly, before a man can 
hope to answer to his name when leading 
thoughts are calling for recruits, he must 
have strangled smallness in himself. 

Sitting at Jesu's feet we hear new calls 
to enter now into a broader and a nobler 
life. The messenger knocks breathless at 
our door, and breathless we would follow 
him to where good men are gathering in 
anxious haste. We hear "the bitter cry 
of outcast London ;" we quiver with out- 
raged pity whenever graphic lectures 
make us (for an hour) realize Russia ; we 
send our mite or millions, as we may, to 
any plausible society for the promotion 
among the poor of the idea that two and 



22 



THE LARGER LIFE, 



two make five. We do all this. We 
yearn to do ten thousand times as much. 
We want life, life, abundant life for every 
starved and panting baby rotting these tor- 
rid summer-days in reeking tenements. Oh ! 
God, our Father, send them abundant life. 

He came that we might have it. But it 
is sternly probable that not until we have 
it can we convey one breath of it to other 
men — not even to that pathetic case which 
stirred up our complacent selfishness for 
half an hour. The Old Guard of our God 
is being mustered, but every one of them 
is a picked man : as yet we have no place 
in such a phalanx of tried men. Those 
meannesses you wot of — and crucifixions of 
convictions in you — they must have ended. 

When we are willing in our unseen 
selves to have the Truth, to the last of it, 
triumphant, then, not before, may we go 
forth to do real battle for it. Men do go 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



23 



out to fight for splendid issues, being all 
narrowness and meanness in themselves : 
they fail ! Truth does not fail — of course 
the great reform for which the charlatan, 
the prude, the one -idea man screech pa- 
thos in falsetto, thai fails — waits, rather, 
for worthier men ; but Truth, even in such 
hysterical attempts as those, succeeds at 
any rate in showing that what is large can- 
not, in spiritual matters more than in 
physical, be possibly contained in what is 
small. Reformers, not reforms, are to be 
had at all times gratis. The public purity, 
the general justice, the good of any kind 
at large, are only aggregations of personal 
possession of what is good and just and 
pure. 

At Jesu's feet we hear the call to life, 
and it is always singular, direct, imme- 
diate, personal : it is, " Be thou, come 
thou, live thou ! " before it grows into the 



24 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



grand commission, "Give thou to others, 
give them a more abundant life ! " 

With God it is inexorably "he that 
doeth," that enters into His true, deep, 
and superabundant life. . . . 

One thought more only in concluding. 

The larger life for which men now are 
working is physical and intellectual only. 
The soul is relegated to the misty dis- 
tances of the unknowable. Now if the 
Christian Church remains aloof from life, 
will not the spiritual in men be killed out- 
right? Here is the last, supremest ques- 
tion for all Christian men. If you and I, 
who hold the things unseen more true than 
all things else, give silent acquiescence to 
this materialistic severing of soul from 
body, we are not true to Him Who treated 
life in its triune completeness and came to 
save the body, not the soul alone. He 
created the physical, so that whatever is 



THE LARGER LIFE. 25 



is sacred ; He endowed the intellectual, 
and men became as gods ; but He conveys 
the spiritual life — His last, best gift — only 
to those who know and love Him. Let 
it be ours, therefore, in the magnificent 
achievement of the larger life, to stand 
and strive for what is spiritual and best. 
The call comes clear and earnest from the 
front, and the awakening conscience of the 
Church responds. Notice the growth of 
intellectual honesty ; mark our expanding 
sympathies ; see how the not half-bad nor 
faithless world still looks for succors to 
the Son of God. 

Jesus and Larger Life ! Send such a 
cry as that across the valley of decision 
where fight the multitudes, and we shall see 
at evening, when our work must end, the 
shadows of a confidence, born of strength 
and peace, falling upon that host in which 
there is not one who is not our own brother. 



20 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



In calm, broad, earnest faith no change 
can frighten us, no opposition daunt. 

Into the larger life the world goes crush- 
ing. " There must be heresies, 5 ' upheav- 
als, startling transformations, arrangement 
and rearrangement of ever-new perspec- 
tive — but through the din we hear one 
trumpet giving a certain sound, amid the 
surging and the dissolution we see One 
stand immovable, sublime. A great cry 
comes from out the splendor of the com- 
ing years ; we hear — and we are not afraid. 
It is the call to life. The fulness of the 
future dawns on us. 

" Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, 
forward, let us range ; 

Let the great world spin forever down the ring- 
ing grooves of change, 

For we doubt not thro' the ages one increasing 
purpose runs, 

And the life of man is widened with the process 
of the suns," 



"WHO AM I? 




WHO AM I? 



I am what I am." 

—1 Cor. xv. 10. 

God's definition of Himself is simply 
this — "I Am." The alpha and the omega 
of life cannot contain more. 

Before He did, He was. After He shall 
have undone, He still will be ; so that His 
fullest, deepest definition of Himself re- 
mains eternally — " I Am." 

The first clear thing that stands out in 
the dawn of every human life is this same 
simple sense — I am ; and this remains the 
basal fact of every life forever. Around 
this rock of conscious personality will 



30 THE LARGER LIFE. 



surge and sweep the torrents of "the 
changes and the chances of this mortal 
life " — around it, mark you, but with no 
power at all to move it from its place. It 
is, and it becomes at once to him who 
stands on it the point of view, the ttov arco 
of all power, the only possible founda- 
tion, the plinth of life. A naked, helpless 
child is born into the world ; he suddenly 
emerges from the night, rises above the 
flood, grasps with his baby hands the rock, 
stands on it, cries " I am," and instantly 
the universe, to the remotest star, is thrown 
into a new, a definite relation to that little 
life. 

Henceforth, for him, life will have one 
unchanging principle, one final fact — him- 
self ! The stars, we say, in their remotest 
courses wait on him, and man, and His- 
tory, and life, and God himself arrange 
themselves about him in the midst. 



WHO AM I? 



31 



Here is the stamp of God upon His 
image : this is that breath which Gocl 
breathed not into the nostrils of the beasts 
that perish. That little child is not a part 
of any larger whole, nor joint nor portion 
of any general life — he is and has a some- 
thing all his own which makes and marks 
and lifts him into life. He is, as God is, 
one, himself. God's first name is I Am ; 
my name, my only name, and yours, is also 
this, I am. Here the eternities converge. 
You are what separates the past and 
future. Standing upon your rock of per- 
sonality, Infinities divide and you remain 
dry-shod, while you take note and name, 
arrange and rearrange the very elements 
of life. History culminates in you, and 
all that splendor which we think of when 
we say the Future — that, too, leads up 
from you, begins at you, will be for you 
what you determine that it may be. God's 



33 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



definition of Himself — "I Am" — is yours 
as well : your simple self, your all. 

On these September and October Sun- 
days we are to think about the larger life. 
We feel that, clear and sure above the ba- 
bel of our modern life, a call comes to us 
all— that is to all of us who think and feel 
— a call to enter now into a higher, truer 
life of mind and soul and body than has 
as yet been possible to men. We want 
intensely now to hear that call ; we want, 
beyond the possibility of fault or loss, 
to have and be and do our utmost. But 
Christ remains for us the Way, the Truth, 
the Life, and we believe that whatsoever 
makes for larger life must come primarily 
from Him, must lead toward Him. Last 
Sunday morning, as we believe and hold, 
we found the only explanation, the only in- 
spiration, of our ominous times ; we found 



WHO AM If 



83 



that the sublimest reaches and the pro- 
foundest depths of the life to come do not 
exceed the bounds of His specific work 
Who came for just this thing — that men 
might have life more abundantly. 

Out of this thought there issued, as we 
thought, a sense of absolute security, of 
peace unspeakable. Moreover, from this 
view of it the call becomes the personal 
command of Him we love and know, so 
that we throw ourselves into the changes 
and the rearrangements with all the confi- 
dent enthusiasm and glow of loyal love. 

On the succeeding Sundays it will be 
necessary for us to look at what are cer- 
tainty the fundamentals of to-day — its 
dangers and its duties, its death, its life, 
remembering, of course, throughout, that 
we are thinking of life as something terri- 
bly true. 

To-day we must be thrown back on our- 
3 



84 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



selves. Before we sally forth into the life 
itself we must be sure that we are only 
what we are. 

No easy task is ours, therefore, to-day, 
for it is easier and wholesomer and much 
more likely to look out into life than to 
look in at life. 

Conscious of the importance of this first 
thing, and painfully aware of the necessity 
of having you accept at once, by force of 
mere simplicity and truth, the personality 
of all this study of the larger life, I venture 
to adopt some plain, strong words of our 
great Parish Patron, that irresistibly true 
man, S. Paul. We are to think about the 
larger life, to-day, from the subjective 
stand-point of personality, and S. Paul's 
frank "I am just what I am" seems to 
clear up for us a starting-place. There is 
a rigorous finality about these words. 
They have the ring of common-sense, and 



WHO AM If 



35 



at the same time — like all plain facts — 
they kindle the imagination. "I am," 
says blunt S. Paul, " just what I am." 
Could anything be plainer? And yet, 
from such a commonplace, whether one 
looks behind or looks ahead, questions 
spring quickly up, fancy flames forth, vis- 
tas extend into the vanishing perspective 
of what has been, and the expanding 
stretches of what may be, and the unswerv- 
ing certainty of such a stern foreground 
throws all the distance of one's life into 
that healthy state of expectation and in- 
qiiiry which must be presupposed in all 
true growth. We do not have to stop to 
argue such a premise. Devoid of flattery 
as it most surely is, it would be hard to 
find a man unwilling to admit it. The 
meanest and the mightiest must say exact- 
ly what S. Paul says. But when a man says 
that, and says it slowly, and says it from 



36 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



his heart — or has it said to him — it seems 
incredible that he should rest there. He 
cannot rest there ! At least two questions 
must instantly spring out of such a face- 
to-face encounter with one's self. When 
I have said, " I am just what I am," the 
plainness of the fact forces my fancy to 
call up the past and to confront me with 
the inevitable question, " Has there been 
change or growth, or am I what I was ? " 
S. Paul nowhere says that — no true man 
ever says, " I am now what I was," so that 
herein lies one sure test which every man 
has ready to his hand, and which he hap- 
pily is bound to use under the goad of 
plainness like the text's. The Past comes 
to us where we stand, and we are forced to 
feel that we are either less or more than 
we have been. So, too, the pregnant Fut- 
ure groans and travails, the poignancy of 
all her pain being due to an inevitable sec- 



WHO AM If 



3? 



ond question which she brings forth, name- 
ly, " Am I what I might be ? " Against 
these two uncertainties that firm "I am 
just what I am," stands out, and one can 
trace with terrible exactness the difference 
between himself and what is right and 
true. These odious comparisons impel to 
life. From the sure ground of the great 
Paul's great axiom let us debate these two 
depending questions, and frankly face the 
facts which face us when we think. 

But, first of all, my brothers, let us be 
quite sure that in all sober earnest we do 
believe that we are really neither more nor 
less than what we are, which sounds ab- 
surd enough, but is a caution called for by 
experience. Not every man has S. Paul's 
insight — few have his honesty of heart, 
especially in dealing with themselves. 
Conceit, and, no less, conscience ; appreci- 
ation and depreciation ; our wills ventrilo- 



38 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



quizing this and that — all these distort the 
true proportions of a man. It is astound- 
ing that some men do grow to actually be- 
lieve the lies they live, until the very mir- 
ror of the conscious self swells into magni- 
fying pride, or shrinks into the concave of 
a false humility, and they believe them- 
selves to be what they are not. 

The best and the most candid of us are 
compelled to wish that Burns's prayer 
were answered in us all, so that we might 
indeed get honest outside glimpses of our- 
selves, at arm's length at the least. 

One of the richest jewels of our lost 
heritage of Catholic devotion was that one 
which the Doctors of the Church named 
Recollection — a precious lodestone, this, 
which ever tended to keep one constant to 
his truest self. The loss of it, especially 
if it implies a habit of distraction and of 
self-estrangement, involves two opposite 



WHO AM If 



89 



but equally important dangers — the dan- 
ger of too lax and of too strict self -judg- 
ment — whenever something rouses us into 
a state of seK-examination. We do not 
know ourselves as earnest people should. 
God only knows how fatal are the dangers 
lurking in such loose valuations of the 
soul. 

Certainly it is a dangerous, a fatal fault 
to think more highly of one's self than one 
should think. Growth must be quite im- 
possible, or at the best spasmodic, acci- 
dental, fruitless, in one who does not real- 
ize that he is small. Beaching is vitally 
connected with all true growth : it is a fun- 
damental principle of evolution. A man 
will scarcely reach to get what he is confi- 
dent he has already. 

Therefore, to over-estimate is to cut off 
all hope of definite attainment, all hope of 
thirst. But, brothers, not this danger, but 



40 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



its reverse, one of self-depreciation, seems 
to me the greater. 

Conceit, of course, does blister and de- 
form the face of life ; but what is it, with 
all its puff and swagger, compared with that 
discouragement which saps the spring and 
the vitality of men, and falls with such a 
thud upon the cofSn of dead aspirations? 
Then, too, this danger of too lowly esti- 
mating our true selves is greater than the 
other in the extent of it. More people fail 
from trying not enough than from attempt- 
ing more than they can do. And why do 
men and women, who could be and have, 
content themselves with bloodless aver- 
ages ? Why do you lurk amid the timid 
shadows of blank aimlessness, and die in 
vapid mediocrity, heart-hungry ? It is be- 
cause you do not know yourself ; it is be- 
cause when Hope and Memory are grap- 
pling to the death within you, you stand 



WHO AM If 



41 



aloof and let Hope die — the sweet-faced 
lad — because you know vindictive, stern, 
old Memory and fear him, and side with 
him. The world would laugh at this ; but 
then we must remember, in these times, 
that the good world is left by good men to 
be run by bad. Into the very teeth of that 
cold cynicism which threatens now to rob 
the world of faith — that pessimistic reptile 
which has begun to crawl across the fair 
escutcheon of a once noble knighthood, 
besmirching with its slime the noble senti- 
ments and fair devices which have been 
blazoned there — against this devilish de- 
preciation of man's worth, the Master 
Whom we love and serve would have us 
fling the flat, plain lie. Yes, brothers, 
pray believe that there are principles of 
right and purity and hope, deep, deep 
within you, and that the crushing sense of 
having outraged these, perhaps, is blinding 



42 THE L AUG EE LIFE. 



you to the tremendous fact that your black 
heart, in the prof oundest springs of it, still 
runs with sweet, pure, true beliefs and 
yearnings. 

" Beloved, if our heart condemn us, God 
is greater than our heart and knoweth all 
things." It is because we do not know, or 
only half know, that we lie prostrate thus, 
as though the scratches and the flesh- 
wounds of the morning were mortal hurts. 
There is a fearful sense in which our " con- 
science doth make cowards of us all." 

To-morrow, with its broad sublimity of 
opportunity, will utterly be lost to multi- 
tudes of men, because the shadow of their 
past prevents their seeing what Ben Ezra 
saw — those 

" instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure, 
That weighed not as his work, but swelled the 
man's account. 



WHO AM If 



48 



Thoughts hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act ; 
Fancies that broke through language and escaped ; 
All I could never be, 
All men ignored in me- — 
This I was worth to God." 

Let us be very sure, as 8. Paul was, 
that in the sight of God we are just what 
we are. In the clearness of this convic- 
tion only can we expect to get true views 
of the two questions issuing from the text : 
" Am I no larger, truer, than I was ? " 
"Am I as large and true and pure as I 
shall ever be ? " 

I. Experience and aspiration are very 
different. We know what we have been, 
but only hope that we may yet become. 
Therefore, the questions must be looked 
at differently. And first of all it must be 
said no man can help another man to solve 
the first one. Our past is ours, whereas 



44 THE LARGER LIFE. 



in dealing with the future one man may 
help another because all growth is toward 
a definite, a single standard. 

At any cross-roads I can point out the 
way that leadeth to eternal life ; but who 
can say from what far-off beginnings and 
by what tortuous road the pilgrims who 
inquire the way have come ? 

Set, then, each one of you, to work at 
our first question : " Am I no more, no 
less, than what I was ? " It will be well 
for us in such a task to throw ourselves 
upon the mercy of the court ; but then, it 
should be constantly remembered that 
while S. Paul's incisive words contain no 
flattery, they also are devoid of all injus- 
tice, so that while wasted hours and pros- 
tituted powers, failures and disappoint- 
ments without end, loom up so high against 
us that we stand self-condemned, and to 
the charge of undevelopment plead guilty, 



WHO AM If 



45 



nevertheless, we have the right to feel that 
we are pleading at a Court that takes full 
note of all those instincts immature, those 
purposes unsure, that weigh not as work 
done, but swell a man's account. 

Yes, brethren, each one of you has title 
to Ben Ezra's peace — peace that wells up 
when we remember all that we wished and 
strove to be and were not. Do you re- 
member days when you were pure? Do 
you remember those first struggles against 
sin ? Do you remember stretches of green 
fields and summer skies and birds, and all 
the nameless ecstasy of children's dreams ? 
Do you remember these? And does the 
recollection of them reach you in this mid- 
winter of your discontent, and make you 
hug your cheerless hearth the closer ? Yes, 
as we speak and think of growth and larger 
life and peace, do you begin to feel like 
falling at His feet, confessing that your 



46 THE LARGER LIFE. 



life is dying in you inch, by inch ; that you 
have not grown ; that you feel utterly cast 
down ? If so, I tell you that such a sense 
of desolation is a sign of thirst, and that 
the grace of God alone can slake it. 
" Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye 
to the waters ! " 

II. Finally, we must think earnestly of 
that still more important second question 
of the days to come : " Am I what I may 
be— am I determined to develop ? 55 

The sign-post at this cross-road is the 
Cross of Christ. And it is ours to stand 
here by the forking ways to point to that 
one which is strait and direct and steep. 
And it does seem as though great multi- 
tudes of men were turning toward it. The 
impulse at the throbbing heart of life has 
now become so strong that thrills of it are 
felt in little, stagnant lives, however iso- 
lated and obscure they be. An angel lias 



WHO AM If 



4? 



gone down into the deepest waters to 
trouble them, but from such troubling of 
the waters will come healing virtue. 

Not one of you escapes the influence of 
the upward movement ; no one of you can 
ever hope to live, if you resist it. 

There is a tramp of myriad feet out- 
side the darkened windows of a narrow 
life — the sound of tumult reaches you in 
the recesses of your selfishness and snug 
content, and all these things seem omi- 
nous, they bother you. You do not like a 
change. In Church and State, and busi- 
ness, things are precisely where you desire 
them to remain. The tumult in the street 
increases. You shake your head ; you 
double bolt your door. You try to get 
a little quiet reading by the fire. But 
louder and still louder grows the noise 
without. How is it with the other houses ? 
Windows are open wide. Women wave 



48 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



courage to the men who pass in solid 
ranks with stern, strong faces, moving in 
one direction. The riot proves to be no 
riot, but a determined movement of grown- 
desperate men to get more Truth, more 
Justice, and more Life ! 

Priests, poets, thinkers, and economists 
are there, no less than that begrimed, dim 
mass of men who do the work. 

Thank God that at the head of this pro- 
cession can be seen the Cross ! 

Thank God that up and down the ranks 
of it are now found priests. Oh ! broth- 
ers, if you would but look forth from those 
blinded windows of your selfish life, and 
see the hurrying, eager multitudes go by, 
the manhood and the honor that are in 
you would send you out to help. Yield 
to the impulse, for it comes from God. 
Grow ! Broaden ! Live ! It is your call 
to life. Let not the past confront you 



WHO AM If 



49 



with its failures ; the future is for all who 
will go into it and take possession. But if 
the thrill of waking life does reach you, as 
it is reaching men throughout the world, 
remember that you are only what you are, 
and that with arms like yours the business 
now on hand cannot be done, that through 
a fossil heart the red-blood of the new 
life cannot course. Brothers, the first 
blow you and I must strike in the attain- 
ment of the larger life will have to be 
struck squarely at ourselves. If history 
must be believed, the warfare for some 
years will have to be maintained upon our 
knees. A Benedictine missionary once 
died a martyr. The abbot of his house 
called for a volunteer among the seventy 
remaining monks. All of the seventy arose 
at once, and each said : " Father, send 
me ! " " Oh ! " cried the abbot, " 1 knew 

that you would all desire to go, I wanted 
4 



50 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



to find out which one of yon was great 
enough to be content to stay and pray." 

We hear the call to life. We yearn to 
grow, to have, to be. What God desires 
is that we should remain until we shall 
have prayed our way into the larger life. 
I shall be seventy years old, but not unless 
I learn how to be forty, fifty, sixty. God 
and the days move slowly. 




EUSH. 



1 1 He hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse ; 
neither delighteth he in any man's legs." 

—Psalm cxlvii. 10. 

Tiked! The world sweeps grandly on. 
We hear the call to life, and there are few 
who are not moved by it. All men are 
quickened by it — all have to hear it any- 
how. 

From every quarter whence their mo- 
tives come men are to-day impelled to 
action — goaded to do. 

But whether from the East of theory, or 
from the West of fact ; whether from out 
the North of cold utility, or from the 
dreamy South of warm imagination, it 



54 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



matters not: the pace at which all men 
must move is set, and it is swift and fierce 
and furious. 

Whether we think or act, we do it eager- 
ly. Intense — intense beyond endurance 
has the strain become. 

And so the world sweeps on, majestic, 
splendid ; but men are tired. Tired. Look 
through the rank on rank of faces as the 
magnificent battalions pass. Beardless, 
but old; eager, determined, desperate, but 
tired. And when you have looked out at 
the white, thin faces of the men who 
march, look in at your own heart, and say 
if at this moment, flushed as you may be 
by the swing and zest, you are not tired. 
It is a sight of quite unutterable grandeur 
— this of an overworked and tired world 
pressing in stern ambition toward the 
achievement of the larger life. It must 
roll up before the eyes of God like a thick 



RUSH. 



55 



cloud of tempering expiation — this thought 
of that immeasurable burden of his re- 
sponsibility to Truth and Duty which man 
is bearing forward on his worn-out back. 

True that a closer look reveals the pain- 
ful fact that much of man's endeavor springs 
from the selfishness of brutal instincts in 
him, and that the lust of greed urges him 
on ; true that men strive and bear and die 
for what is basest in them — martyrs for 
gain. 

We read that the decisive battles of the 
world were won, in part, by men who 
fought for neither hearth, nor home, nor 
country, but for pay. 

It may be true that men plunge now into 
the larger life, in one or all of its unfold- 
ing phases, with the inspiring motive 
in their hearts — revenue only ! But action 
and endurance, for whatever cause, are at 
their very worst two splendid sins. 



56 THE LABGER LIFE. 



Niagara's magnificent abandon — her 
waste of waters, are now to be induced to 
usefulness beyond all name. So, too, the 
rush, the push, the volume, and the waste 
of our illimitable life God will induce, by 
hidden tunnellings and engineering feats 
beyond our ken, into a power of such tre- 
mendous practical and moral force as shall 
make clear the otherwise heartbreaking 
problem of pain. With God not might, 
not force, not volume, but results, have 
weight. 

" He hath no pleasure," says our text, 
whatever, " in the strength of an horse ; 
neither delighteth he in any man's legs ; " 
but to each one of us, as we advance into 
the lists to do our part, He says : " Sir 
Knight, thou knowest what is right— ac- 
complish it." God and my duty ! Oh ! 
what a motto, this, to fight with. Last 
Sunday, it may be remembered, we strove 



RUSH. 



57 



to show that whatsoever larger life might 
mean to men, to individual men it could 
mean only that which they themselves 
were willing to admit they lacked. We 
enter the consideration of the life itself, its 
dangers, its untold expanses, under the 
burning sense of definite and ascertainable 
conditions as individual men. 

To-day we are to look at what is cer- 
tainly the superficial first mark of the 
larger life — its rush, in one word. Let us 
look at it, then, each one of us, from the 
peculiar stand-point of himself. 

Among the dangers which surround an 
earnest man there hardly can be one more 
subtle, and certainly there is not one more 
prevalent, than this temptation of the 
times to rush things through. 

There seems to be no side of life at all 
which this seducing influence has failed to 
reach. The potent formative and most 



58 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



determining forces which shape ns now 
make for high-pressure. Life to be lived 
at all must be condensed. Whether it is 
worth living thus becomes a question. 
A man's life-message must now be wired 
— ten words by telegraph, and these ten 
words must be again boiled down. " Erics- 
son buried," or " Newman dead." At 
breakfast one cannot be asked to read 
much more. And, after all, do not two 
words contain the gist of almost any- 
thing? Life is too short for more than 
what is put into a nutshell. We have 
grown stenographic, encyclopedic, terse. 
These are the halcyon days of pocket-dic- 
tionaries, of rapid transit, of short-cuts 
generally into immensities. We want, we 
learn, we get, we have, we think, we feel, 
we try, we reach, we move, as twenty years 
ago would have been thought impossible. 
And those who can foresee begin to tell 



RUSH. 



59 



us that we are only in the dawn of what 
is yet to be. Now every liye man glories 
in this bursting of the bonds which tram- 
mel ; every true man thanks God for what 
to-morrow promises. 

But, earnest men, on every hand already 
we can begin to see the ruins and the 
wrecks which prove our danger. 

Therefore, to-day, assuming at the start 
that you respond as men to the all-con- 
quering impulse of the life around you, we 
must reflect that, as we are true men, not 
live ones only, as we are men who have 
not only legs but hearts and heads, we 
must do what we can to know and meet 
the dangers, and so to guide the irresistible, 
the inexhaustible Niagara of our awakened 
manhood into the chastened, sober, steady 
channels of true power. Oh ! brothers, 
with the thews and sinews of your manli- 
ness do what you can in life and for it ; 



60 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



always remembering that, as the cataract 
breaks into mist and madness, thunders 
itself into the nothingness of spray, so all 
the pulsing rush of life and strength and 
of ambitions in you must dash you into 
naught unless your heart in the profound- 
est throb of it beats out the iron pur- 
poses of right and of attainment and of 
things done well. It is a splendid sin, as 
we have said, to work at anything which 
calls for sacrifice, which costs us pain ; but 
think of the ineffable, the sinless splendor 
which hangs above the doing what is right 
with sacrifice and pain. 

Looking at the conditions which sur- 
round us now, there would appear to be 
no question as to the fascination of the 
danger. Most of us yield to influence of 
this kind. To the contagion of sheer en- 
thusiasm few men are callous. But on 
some lives which yield most readily the 



RUSH. 



61 



manifest effect of an exciting cause is the 
quite opposite and paradoxical extreme of 
rust and self-withdrawal. The hypercritic, 
the obstructionist, the bored blase are the 
result of heedlessness and rush as much as 
the enthusiast and radical are the expo- 
nents of it. 

Next Sunday we will look at rust as the 
co-ordinate of rush, a fatal factor of our 
life ; but now we must confine our thought 
to the much commoner and opposite re- 
sult — the strain, the stress, the worry, 
and the rush. Regarded as a menace to 
one's peace of mind, and as a very real 
danger to all active men, there are two 
elements which give to it its subtlety and 
power : 

(1.) The Element of Number, and 
(2.) The Element of Noise. 
J. Mere magnitude is mighty in the 
minds of men. Majorities partake of 



62 THE LARGER LIFE. 



powers which, sober second thought ac- 
cords to excellence alone. 

Man is gregarious, tends toward the 
crowd. And, brothers, to what tyranny of 
domination numbers have grown to-day! 
We are familiarized from birth with the 
immense, and prattle glibly about sub- 
limities. Figures grow fat. The trusted 
bank official steals half a million, and, 
what is the astounding part of it, finds 
ways to spend it in a year ! 

One building costs a million and a half. 
And how complacently we read of men 
worth fifty millions ! 

The plane of living must inevitably rise. 
Your son's house-rent has reached a larger 
sum than that which covered all of your 
expenses when you were married. "What 
could you say to-day in your own nursery 
that would at all astonish children five 
years old ? Vastness, exaggeration, size — 



RUSH. 



68 



these enter into everything they hear or 
read. It is, of course, a splendid vision 
which expands before the keen, clear eyes 
of young America — a vision of gigantic 
emprise, resources inexhaustible, and tre- 
mendous gains. But splendor so reful- 
gent, powers so vast, dazzle and daunt 
the most heroic of us. The commonplace 
grows unendurable amid the show, and 
what we really could do well, and ought 
to do, falls into pale contempt beside the 
bigger something others have done. 

And then the element of chance is al- 
ways to be found in number. 

Whatever man has done, man certainly 
can do. Well, then, this man grew rich 
during the night — a boom in real estate, a 
rise in stocks, a long-forgotten uncle in 
Australia dead ; this way, or that way, men 
grow rich each day. Why should not you 
and I do likewise ? Once get the taste of 



64 THE LARGER LIFE. 



that into a young man's heart and he will 
hate the humdrum books he keeps, the 
work he has to do, as he hates death. 
The vigor of ambition will become a fever, 
the sternness of endurance turn into mad- 
dening fret. Not only in the business of 
our getting on does this insidious element 
of number lurk, but in the higher aspira- 
tions of the heart and head impatience 
and discouragement prove that it works 
there too. 

The intellectual successes of the less 
than true, the glamour of the popular and 
new, the flattering applause accorded to 
the thin and brilliant — all these crush out 
the plodding faith of those who would be 
true and right. Archbishop Laud's war- 
cry, " I am for thorough," rallies but few 
to-day. 

Men do their second best, or worse than 
that, simply because there seems to be no 



BUSH. 



m 



market for the best. It used to take a 

lace-girl all her life to make one ruffle for 

my lady's gown — and scraps of it are 

snatched up at ten thousand francs. 

There is an old armchair in a Bavarian 

castle which one young man began to 

carve, carving until he died ; his son took 

up the task, and not until his son grew old 

at it was the superb work done. The 

miracle of beauty was what those patient, 

faithful men set out to work. What if it 

did take all of one brief century ? what if 

three generations passed away into the 

night ? We seem to want no miracles like 

these, but, on the contrary, the wonder 

that we would most like to see is some 

machine into one end of which a log 

would go, to come out at the other a whole 

set of furniture. Here lies the difference. 

And difference from truth is danger. 

The prefaces to Walter Scott's inimit- 
5 



06 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



able books used to be skipped : they skip 
the books themselves now. Life is too 
short, too Rider - Haggardish, for books 
like those. Life is compendious, there- 
fore not complete. Think of our mass of 
information, and little knowledge. Think 
of the spread of things ! Can there be 
depth to it ? On, on, on rushes the grand 
old world. Conquering and still to con- 
quer. But you and I who live to-day, to- 
morrow, and the next day die. 

Is it a satisfactory life ? is it a peaceful? 
Is it a life that goes into the heart of 
things? Or are we scourged along the 
surface of unbounded opportunity merely 
because the multitude are scurrying across 
the plain ? Let us believe that we would 
best serve man's true progress by doing 
what we can intensely, well. Number 
should not oppress us, force should not 
terrify. Intensity, enthusiasm, faith, when 



RUSH. 



67 



not compelled to compass simple duty, 
explode with blasting and with blighting 
hurt. Let us live truly where we are, 
although the standards of a day condemn 
us. 

" So you believe in numbers. I do not. 

Where do all great ideas, all large aims, 
All schemes that lift humanity have birth ? 
In the majority ? Ah, no ! my friend ; 
In the minute minority of one. 

Mere numbers have no power to impose on me ; 
In God, man, thing — one only is the best." 

II. The element of noise enters disas- 
trously into the council chamber of our 
lives. 

Din is distracting. How keenly all of 
us appreciate the quaint conceit that 
speaks of so much noise that one can 
scarcely hear himself think. The age 



68 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



above all things is blatant, and bragga- 
docio takes the place of truth. The worst 
is that we feel it, suffer extremely from it. 
Truth is so silent ! Facts, feeling so se- 
cure, remain so awfully unspoken. Error 
blurts out. Protests are always loud. 
Nothing so loud-mouthed as uncertainty 
exists. We whistle in the dark and feel 
less lonely. And in the darkness of our 
unseen selves we grope toward any point 
whence voices reach us. The more the 
merrier : Vox populi, vox Dei ; therefore, 
whatever ninety-nine men say must be 
quite true enough for the one-hundredth ! 

Public opinion can beat you at all 
points. Give up the fruitless task : 
swim, not against the tide, but with it ! 
Buy your convictions in a penny paper: 
change your convictions when the fellows 
do. 

My brothers, you and I are asked from 



RUSH. 



69 



day to day to yield that one thing which 
a true man guards at the cost of life — his 
honor ; for if there is one thing above all 
others that can stain honor, it is the weak 
compliance with each passing fad. 

Be careful, and be on your guard. It 
seems not fatal, but it is more so than any 
other danger that surrounds you now. 
We vote in these days viva voce. Now, 
you should vote by ballot. Write it out 
fair and large ; write yourself into it, then 
cast your vote for what is desperately so. 
And do not fear lest you are not in line 
with men, or that you can retard the Truth 
by being true yourself. By viva voce men 
vote now. The populace still howl their 
"Crucify!" But you and I will dare to 
stand for what we really think, and thus 
give to the work we do the ring of truth. 

" The shallows murmur, but the depths 
are silent." Riot is never righteous, Nat- 



70 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



ure has growing pains, but does not strive 
nor cry. It is quite certain that the truth 
is patient. 

Oh! then, if we would do good work 
and reach indeed the stature of a perfect 
man, let us learn how to bear and be be- 
fore we rush into the conflict and the 
noise. There in the thick of it one can- 
not think it out. The place where cow- 
ards cry, or demagogues declaim, or hot- 
heads sound the charge, is in all likelihood 
the very spot in all the field that needs 
the help of your good arm the least. 

Not there, but where grim silence grap- 
ples with still grimmer sin — there you will 
find the Captain of your only possible 
salvation ; find out that place at any risk 
or cost, and fight there, fall there. 

There will be plenty to rush in to rally 
at all the other standards in the field ; 
plenty to charge pell-mell, plenty to bid 



RUSH. 



71 



defiance. But the Captain calls. His 
voice comes to us through the roar of 
battle : " To him that overcometh will I 
give a white stone, with a new name writ- 
ten, which no man knoweth saving he that 
receiveth it." That white stone is your 
life- — fight for it : that new name written 
on it is the one word, Peace — but written 
not in my tongue or the tongue of others, 
but in yours alone. 

When you behold that mystic symbol 
you will be able to interpret it, and you 
will tell us then that it is — Peace. Stand, 
therefore ! 

He hath no pleasure in the mere brutal 
strength of any horse ; neither delighteth 
He in any man's mere legs, however swift 
and powerful they be ; " but His delight 
is in them that fear Him, and put their 
trust in His mercy." 



72 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



Tired. We are so tired. And yet we 
feel and know that rest is not yet. No, 
not yet can we rest. We must be up and 
doing — but doing what ? If we can answer 
that, the danger has been met and over- 
come. 

It is impossible for us to feel indiffer- 
ent, but it is very possible for us to feel 
uncertain. Well, then, what better can we 
do than fling ourselves — heart, soul, and 
body- — into the promises, the work, the 
sacred Heart of Christ ? 

As true men we must work ; let us be 
yoked with Him and plough long furrows 
— furrows that mean eventual Bread 
enough, labor that ends in an eternal rest. 

" Work while it is called to-day, for the 
night cometh when no man can work ; " 
but be co-laborers with God through all. 



EUST. 



* 4 . . . the rust of them shall be a witness 
against you." — S. James v. 3. 

" 6 lbs avTebv els fJLaprvpiov v/uV eorai." 

Face to face with the upheaval and the 
dissolution and the change, two great stern 
facts emerge to-day into the densest cer- 
tainty from out the mist and vagueness 
and unrest, confronting us with meaning 
and with light. First is the fact which 
none who read deny, namely, that many, if 
not most, of the profoundest verities of 
faith are rapidly being thrown into quite 
new relations with each other and with 



76 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



life. Even where creeds remain the ac- 
cent has been changed — the emphasis is 
put not where our fathers put it. This 
fact most certainly stands out to-day as 
the important feature upon the face of 
thought ; but, then, the true expression of 
a face depends not on one feature — it is 
affected, not determined by it. 

And, surely, one cannot look steadily 
into the broad, sad, human face of life to- 
day and then say from his heart that the 
expression of that face of life is doubt. 
No, brothers, other features stand there 
and they tell. And there, above the rest, 
is this one other fact of which we speak. 
There is disintegration and restatement ; 
yes, but parallel with it, equal to it in 
force and as a final factor in the magnifi- 
cent out-working of the larger life there is 
this second fact — a fact which timid ortho- 
doxy does not seem to see, and which well- 



RUST. 



77 



meaning criticism fails shamefully to use 
by way of reassurance and to pacify : I 
mean the fact that men hold on tenacious- 
ly to things and truths even while scorn- 
fully rejecting explanations, definitions, 
names. Surely, if this be true, there is a 
world of reassurance in it. Look at it, 
please. Look at it now in its relation to 
our present topic. Rust teaches us re- 
sponsibility. And in the matter of re- 
sponsibility we have a graphic illustration 
of the point here made. The Judgment ! 
The Judgment with its attendant terrors 
of an arbitrary and an angry God — its 
hellish penalties, its Calvinistic cruelty of 
fate, its heartless logic, its publicity, its 
shame — how very changed to-day are all 
the thoughts which are called up by that 
one doom's-day knell of Judgment. Gone 
— gone past all man's power of bringing 
back are the mechanical, the Calvinistic, 



78 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



and the inhuman, not to say undivine, 
atrocities of wrath ; but he would be quite 
blinded by his fears who would presume 
to say that when man's outraged sense of 
love and mercy flung Calvin and his hell 
from Christian thought, responsibility, ac- 
countability, and justice perished. No, 
brothers, these remain ; the sense of his 
responsibility to truth, to life, to God, this 
furrows and illuminates man's face, this 
bends his tired back, this is the central, 
permanent, conviction of his soul, other- 
wise dazed and dashed. 

Great are the loss and danger when the 
doctors differ ; pain and confusion must 
ensue on change ; but, then, let us be very 
sure, my brothers, that at the aching 
heart of it, life longs to harmonize with 
truth, however undefined and naked it 
may be. And this great truth which rust 
with its disfiguration and corrosion teaches 



RUST. 



79 



is, that we stand accountable. You may be 
vague and utterly upset in your theology ; 
you may not know what eschatology im- 
plies ; you may have had your little laugh 
at hell — but every day you live, each thing 
you do, still more the things you leave 
undone, the common - sense, the honor, 
and the gravity of life, these teach you 
this; these speak a word which con- 
science echoes and experience caps — re- 
sponsibility ! 

How glorious this thought, that, even if 
we deny Him, He cannot deny Himself, 
and Truth lays hold upon the instinct and 
the heart, however much capricious so- 
phistry or fickle fancy may captivate or 
flirt with reason. 

It seems a splendid evidence of God 
and Truth that, with whatever views of 
judgment and the life to come, we may 
discuss this question of responsibility 



80 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



from absolutely the same point of view. 
The Catholic believer and the agnostic 
critic are able to debate from the same 
premise. Verily, how vast, how perma- 
nent, how sure are God and Truth ! 

I. It is, therefore, quite free from theo- 
logical conceptions that we approach this 
most distressing symptom threatening the 
larger life. Last Sunday, it may be re- 
membered, we thought of the quite oppo- 
site temptation of awakening life, and it 
was easier to see how rush should prove 
so prevalent in days like ours than it will 
be to show how rust is a result of them. 
We are so prone to hero-worship and so 
gregarious — we are so panicky, so swayed, 
and, above all, enthusiasm is so contagious 
that rush and swing and pell-mell gener- 
ally become quite irresistible to me, if you 
and you about me have them. But we are 
fearfully and wonderfully made. Build 



RUST. 



81 



up your theory of man into perfection and 
the first man you meet will have some 
queer, impossible peculiarity, some crooked 
joint, that never can be packed into your 
perfect theory. Subtle, unseen, evasive, 
are the essential forces which control us. 
To that extent to which man is divine he 
is a paradox. You must expect surprises, 
and idiosyncrasies and difference. A soul 
is something to be dealt with on your 
knees, in silence. Truth touches all, but 
differently ; and you and I, who stand be- 
side each other here and now, are not af- 
fected by our Time -Truth equally. It 
pulls me forward and it flings you back. 
It lures me on to prodigality of powers 
which counts not cost ; it daunts, deters, 
discourages, and holds you, preaching ne- 
cessity for caution and reserve anent the 
rainy day. By each of us, therefore, the 

Truth is to be found midway, each has to 
6 



82 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



meet and overcome the danger which be- 
sets himself, if he would hear the call to 
life and heed it. 

II. To-day we are to try to understand 
the danger of inaction. " The rust of 
them shall be a witness," says the text, 
" against you." 

Now, the immediate reference is to 
riches. It is against that damnable accu- 
mulation of money for its own sake that 
S. James is writing. " Go to now, ye 
rich men, weep and howl for your miseries 
that shall come upon you," so the chapter 
opens. But while we know that only one 
small letter, "y," stands for the difference 
between miser and misery, it is to that 
much broader aspect of a man's endow- 
ments which holds him rich who has 
capacities and faculties and powers — not 
dollars merely — that we would turn to-day 
in this consideration of man's responsi- 



RUST. 



m 



bility. Heaven will have no more com- 
passion, I take it, than we have love, for 
that too common class of shrewd, successful 
men whose only worry and whose only care 
is, how they can invest their surplus income 
to the best advantage, while God's securi- 
ties in church, in charity, in public works, 
are offered to them in the open market. 

Would you believe it, there are some 
cities really whose hope of progress waits 
for what irreverent young men speak of 
as " half a dozen first-class funerals." 

In other words, there are piled up im- 
mense, atrocious, 'monstrous hoards of 
power, which cannot be applied to benefit 
the commonwealth, to beautify, to bless, 
until the misers who control them are called 
to their account, and so the stewardship be 
taken from their niggard hands. 

Verily the rust of them shall be a wit- 
ness dead against them. 



84 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



But there is altogether too much said 
about the rich. With great complacency 
we fall to calling wealthy men bad names, 
and did you ever have the slightest diffi- 
culty in saying how other people ought 
to spend their money ? For instance : 
" There is Mr. Dives, he must be worth a 
million at the very least. There is no 
earthly reason why he should not give, 
say, fifty thousand dollars to the cause." 
How well off we would be "if the blar- 
ney of beggars " were true ! 

No, brethren, one talent — sonorous word 
implying " riches of the mind "—one talent 
hidden, buried, suffered to lie inert, will 
witness with its cankerous rust no less 
than five or ten or one hundred. The 
ratio of responsibility is inverse, rather. 
If I can only do one thing, and fail to do 
it, my loss is absolute, unutterable. 

III. Now, there are two great causes of 



BUST. 



85 



inaction in times of fierce activity like 
ours, namely, 

(1.) Bewilderment. 

(2.) Discouragement. 

Let us think briefly of them, now. 

Doubtless innumerable other causes 
suggest themselves to you, my brothers, 
and chief among them, I suppose, we 
would be predisposed to say was selfish- 
ness. But let us take higher ground, and 
hopefuller, than that. Let us believe both 
in ourselves and one another sufficiently 
to feel that, "take him for all in all," man 
is in earnest, and that the base, wherever 
it exists, hides what is not base in him, 
but pure, and capable of an interpretation 
in terms of God and love and right. 

Selfishness withers, it is true, the fruits 
and the flowers, but these two other 
causes, subtle as sin, have power to daze 
determination and to strangle hope. 



85 



THE LARGER LIFE, 



Many a man who lives to-day entirely in 
and for himself, and through whose shell 
of selfishness it seems impossible that 
love or warmth or the enthusiasm of self- 
sacrifice could ever penetrate — many a 
man thus narrowed, and driven in, and 
lonely, could tell you of old days when he 
went out to do and be the best and truest 
— could show you pinches of dry dust 
pressed in the mouldy album of his recol- 
lection which once were violets and lilies- 
of-the-valley and mignonette and roses 
and forget-me-nots. What blighted him ? 
What crushed him into pale indifference 
and cold restraint? Not selfishness at 
first, at any rate — no, brothers, of your 
charity, not selfishness ; but one of these 
two desolating causes of decay and death : 
he was bewildered or he was discouraged. 
We have already spoken of the tremendous 
influence of magnitude on men : excellence 



RUST. 



87 



has it also, and he is pessimistic surely 
who says that averages and standards have 
not risen grandly. Yes, everything is 
higher than it was, and this daunts many. 
Then, too, think brothers, about competi- 
tion, think of monopoly, think of the cen- 
tralizing vortex of to-day. The humdrum 
hides its head; the mediocre falters; the 
weak, the small, the poor grow sick at 
heart. 

The thread-and-needle store becomes a 
corner of one counter in an establishment 
ten stories high. 

The little man in business fails. Prof- 
its are shaved down to the dying point, 
and ninety-odd per cent of business men 
fetch up in bankruptcy. 

Eoom at the top, of course, but forty 
times as many lawyers, parsons, doctors, 
on each step as can with any comfort or 
success stand on it, and at the bottom 



88 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



such a mob of men that hearts all earnest- 
ness and zeal at first grow heavy, desper- 
ate, then break outright. 

But to each one who, having entered, 
afterward fails, there are innumerable 
multitudes who enter not at all; poor, 
" mute inglorious Miltons," experiencing, 
not singing, " Paradise Lost." There stand 
now, as we speak and think, how many 
men and women on the brink of life? 
God only knows ; but Ave do know some- 
thing of the unspoken, undefined heart- 
hunger that makes these young men and 
young women think before they plunge. 

Deliberately let me say now to every 
young life that these words may reach, 
that there is danger — danger unspeakably 
extreme — that you will carry to the end a 
hungry, unconfessed, soul-gnawing sense 
of having been compelled to do a meaner 
work than God and your own heart in- 



RUST. 



tended. And whence comes such a men- 
ace to our peace of mind ? It comes from 
the confusion and the bewilderment which 
fall so fatally about that very time and 
place where peace and solitude and God 
should most be sought — that is, the thresh- 
old of one's active and external life. 

We say of such an one : " He was cut 
out for something different, better:" and 
he says of himself : " Yes, and I have cut 
myself from life and peace." 

" The native hue of resolution 
Grows sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
thought." 

Oh ! brothers, as the call to life comes 
ringing from the Master and the men who 
work, which one of us does not leap up 
to answer to his name, to do his part ? 
Ay, by that secret thrill of faith in your 
own powers, by those brave dreams of 
what you're going to do, by all those 



90 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



plans you make through the long summer 
days, by all those blessed visions of the 
night — by these, I know you to be one of 
us, I know that a live coal from off the 
Altar has touched your lips, and that the 
majesty and mystery of life Uplift you. 
You are going to Germany to study — to 
perfect yourself ; you will stand out and 
out for what is highest, best. But, oh ! you 
will not have things as you so rightly wish 
them. You cannot go to Germany — can- 
not perfect yourself ! Face it ! And face 
it down ! Oh ! will you fail, and feebly, 
hopelessly, disgracefully sink into nothing, 
simply because it proved impossible to be- 
come all ? The call comes to us where we 
are, and it demands no more than we can 
do ; but it does ask for all that we can do. 

IV. Finally, brethren, let us, if possi- 
ble, reach clear ideas of the true force of 
the discouragements of life. 



RUST. 



91 



Bewilderment deters and dazes men at 
the beginning : discouragement falls like 
a malediction on us when w T e have tried, 
grown tired, failed. Therefore, while of 
the two the first seems worse, preventing 
as it does even attempt at living ; the sec- 
ond falls upon a man when he is weakest, 
least able to resist it and to try again. 

The larger life in all its splendor and 
extent summons men vainly, simply be- 
cause discouragement has grown into a 
constitutional disease. 

Middle-aged men take middling views of 
things : old age will not invest in anything 
so speculative as the future. The past, 
now, can be counted on, and what is, is. 
But who can say what that upstart, To- 
morrow, will spring upon us ? The argu- 
ment is from analogy. " Few and evil " 
have been the days ; therefore evil and 
few will be the days to come ! 



92 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



But God and Life break through the 
meshes of such flimsy logic. 

Under the inspiration of the Son of 
God a man will go "through fire and 
water " — rise from ruin — to Life. Dis- 
couraged ? Tea, our Lord, thou knowest ! 
But oh ! Lord most mighty, oh ! holy and 
most merciful Saviour, suffer us not at 
our last hour to fall from Thee ! 

Discouraged ! " Cast down," indeed ; 
but, by that very quiver of your hopeless 
hope— never forsaken. The stuff is in you. 
The life-throb proves you capable of liv- 
ing. The call comes to us ivhere we are, 
and as we are. 

" God has a work for me to do in Eng- 
land," John Henry Newman said to him- 
self once on the brink of death ; and he 
came back to life, to England, and to work. 

"It is too late ! " "Ah, nothing is too 
late till the tired heart shall cease to pal- 



BUST. 



pitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty ; 
Sophocles wrote his grand 6 CEdipus,' and 
Sinionides bore off the prize of verse from 
his compeers when each had numbered 
more than fourscore years ; and Theo- 
phrastus, at fourscore and ten, had but be- 
gun his 6 Characters of Men.' Chaucer, at 
Woodstock, with the nightingales, at sixty, 
wrote the 6 Canterbury Tales ; ' Goethe, 
at Weimar, toiling to the last, completed 
e Faust ' when eighty years were past. 
These are indeed exceptions ; but they 
show how far the Gulf Stream of our 
youth may flow into the Arctic regions of 
our lives where little else than life itself 
survives." 

Oh ! my earnest brothers, it is still to- 
day! The night, the dark night, cometh 
when no man can work. Life is still plead- 
ing for fulfilment in us ; God still expects 
a something at our hands. 



94 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



The dawn of aspiration has long passed 
by for all ; the high noon of accomplish- 
ment has gone from many ; it may be that 
the lengthening shadows of approaching 
night are creeping over some ; but the 
eleventh hour is not too late for Him 
whose vineyard we are asked to work in 
now. Life cannot be, of course, all that it 
promised once, but 

44 ... as the evening twilight fades away, 
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day." 



TACT. 



TACT. 



" . . . Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and 
harmless as doves.'' — S. Matthew x. 16. 

Standing as we do this morning mid- 
way in our proposed consideration of the 
larger life — its character, its dangers, and 
its aims— it would seem well for us to stop 
in order to review in brief the points which 
have been thus far made. 

Up to this turning-point the life has 
come to us merely in its immense reality 
and splendid scope, its emphasis of per- 
sonality, its two inevitable, because inher- 
ent, dangers of rush and rust. "We have 

discovered that the call to life is not made 

7 



98 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



now in the charmed circle of the initiated 
and elect alone, but that it is an irresisti- 
ble, an omnipresent force which interpene- 
trates all life, and hangs a luminous and 
wrapping atmosphere above all conscious- 
ness. But though its reach be thus as 
wide and deep as man, and coextensive 
with his extremest yearning, nevertheless 
the call is desperately personal, unspeak- 
ably direct, so that the larger life to which 
it summons us has absolutely no existence 
except to those who hear the call and heed 
it. 

And as the life is of and for each sepa- 
rate and individual soul, so, too, we find 
that it presents to each and every man who 
is confronted by it one or the other of 
those two fatal tendencies of rush or rust, 
which menace symmetry, confound phi- 
losophy, and lead to loss. 

To-day we turn from dangers and dis- 



TACT. 



90 



eases to those prerequisites and signs of 
healthy life which grow more prominently- 
such as life grows larger. Tact, contact, 
aim, and their attendant galaxy of graces 
— these will engage our thoughts and lead 
us to the contemplation at the last of 
Peace and the Life Eternal. 

I. Probably there is no man who with 
any degree of earnestness has entered up- 
on the serious and splendid business of 
living well to-day who does not feel that 
life — whatever else it may or may not be, 
is certainly increasingly complex. And 
this complexity leads to perplexity; and 
what perplexes men calls for that graceful, 
subtle, dangerous faculty of tact, which, as 
it is essential to success, we feel should 
be considered first among the elementary 
signs of healthy life. 

Let us, of course, remember that our 
analysis of the broad glare of modern life 



100 THE LARGER LIFE. 



is made exclusively upon the spectroscope 
of that morality alone which has the im- 
primatur of the Son of God. 

The intervention of the perfect prism of 
the unutterably grand and sternly tender 
Christ settles at once for us the value and 
the meaning of all light. There are all 
sorts of lights flashed in our eyes to guide 
us into who knows how many harbors; 
but there is only one true " kindly light" 
that leads us on toward that one haven, 
where, from the bottom of our bewildered 
hearts, we wish we were. 

The world has counterfeited God at 
every point. Quite often, too, the " coun- 
terfeit presentment" passes for the man, 
and Satan never acts one-half so well as 
when he represents angels of light. 

The world has a justice, and an honesty, 
and a purity, and an integrity, and a respect- 
ability, just as much as God has ; it calls 



TACT, 



101 



them by the same names, it urges for them 
the same claims, it puts a definite commer- 
cial and social value on them. But, oh, my 
brothers, against the broad white light of 
God, as it revealed itself in the sublime 
simplicity of Jesus Christ, these manufact- 
ured virtues, these concocted lights, roll 
like a blinding mist, a twilight of un- 
certainty and blurred outline, ending too 
soon, too certainly, in darkness and in 
night. There is a tact of God — and who 
is not familiar with a tact which has the 
same name, urges the same most plausible 
and graceful claims, but which is not of 
God but from the Devil — straight from 
him who is the fruitful father of all 
lies. 

And, brethren, in the complexities of 
this our larger life we cannot be successful 
without tact. 

God offers you His kind. 



102 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



The Devil offers his. Surely it is not 
wasting time, if we look into these two 
offers now, in order to decide which of 
the two we mean deliberately and finally 
to use. Let us come at a true and clear 
idea of tact as God in Jesus Christ ap- 
proves it. The text is probably the fairest 
statement of God's side because one-half 
of it seems as extreme a statement as the 
world could ask. "Be wise as serpents!" 
Ignatius Loyola or Machiavelli could 
hardly ask a precept keener at the point. 
But Christ goes on to say, " harmless as 
doves," and we are face to face at once 
with just that paradox which issues always 
in our phrase " the tact of God " — a power 
of love and light which helps a man 
through conflict, contradiction, doubt, into 
the larger life. 

Error is never paradoxical : truth always 
is. "Tact," says the world, is simply — 



TACT. 



103 



" succeed by hook or crook." " Tact," on 
the other hand, says God, "is Wisdom 
and Love united, bringing forth Truth." 

It is impossible for any man to grasp at 
once both phases of a truth ; but always 
in a paradox one-half is perfectly within 
one's reach and comprehension. 

An honest man takes up his stand on 
that sure side, and from its solid and un- 
questioned certainty explores the meaning 
of the, as yet, inexplicable other half. 
Look at the text. You may well wonder 
what is meant by being urged to cultivate 
the cunning and the stealth of serpents ; 
but nobody can question for one moment 
just what is meant by being bidden to be- 
come as harmless as the meek and loving 
dove. This second half of our Lord's par- 
adoxical position is, therefore, brethren, 
the one from which we must investigate 
the meaning of the other. We go forth 



104 THE LARGER LIFE. 



armed with a test unfailing. Tact of what- 
ever subtlety, or grace, or plausibility, or 
of successful issue, which has one atom of 
deceit in its inception, methods, or results, 
is not the tact of God, and cannot make 
(for more than one brief hour) for larger 
life. It came from hell, and it will sink to 
hell, though all the world stand by to 
praise the miracle of circumvention that it 
wrought. And yet we need tact now, and 
Christ commands it. What did He mean 
by it ? What is the tact of God making 
for life ? 

II. In operation and results it will not 
be an easy matter for us to decide between 
what is and what is not of God in this 
sweet sister of the Graces — Tact. 

No, brothers, not to-day — not till the 
judgment of a clearer day reveals us face 
to face. Not through a glass, darkly, must 
we presume to peer into the mystery and 



TACT. 



105 



meaning of men's motives. But there is 
one coherent, readily applied, and certain 
means of testing tact. There is uncon- 
scious tact which comes from God, and 
there is conscious tact which does not 
come from God. And every man knows 
perfectly which of the two is his. Look 
at the two. 

(a.) Unconscious, it becomes the action 
of which love is the thought ; it is the 
principle of love in action moulding the 
whole man's life. It sees to it that every 
touch — and tact means touch — it sees to 
it, my brother, that every touch has gentle- 
ness with firmness, power with truth. It 
smooths rough places, makes the crooked 
straight. It is like sight, like hearing, like 
the beating heart — unconscious, unpremed- 
itated, simple. 

It makes allowances, it understands, it 
waits ; it speaks the truth in love. 



106 THE LARGER LIFE. 



The thirteenth chapter of the First Corin- 
thians is its working code ; the Sermon on 
the Mount its charter. And yet it wages 
war eternal, desperate, mortal, with what- 
soever and with whomsoever " loveth and 
maketh a lie." Like a true mother's love 
it manifests its kindness chiefly by being 
true — true to the truth at all costs ; true 
to eternity, true to the ultimate, the best. 

It is a grace, a faculty which every man 
who truly is in Christ possesses, because 
it is the very working principle of the 
Christ-life. Made up of gentleness, hu- 
mility, consideration, patience, a willing- 
ness to see it as the other does ; of mod- 
esty, good nature, and unfailing sympathy, 
it gives a man tremendous power to remove 
mountains, to stop the mouths of lions, to 
subdue kingdoms. It is a thing to covet 
and to seek. But while it brings a man to 
self-respect and peace, it fails completely 



TACT. 



107 



in the eyes of men to satisfy the world's 
idea of getting on. 

The only Man Who ever had the tact of 
God in all of its perfection and its power 
proved such a failure! His kindred and 
His friends forsook Him. He had a thou- 
sand chances to succeed, and failed. He 
would persist in speaking out the truth as 
He conceived it, and came to grief. He 
went into the Church, of all things, and 
lashed the power of money from its courts. 
He tripped up lawyers and denounced op- 
pressors. He pleaded for hirelings and 
widows, claimed for the poor their rights, 
worked for the outcast and lost. 

Blundering and failing thus He lived 
out truth ; what wonder that His ministry 
was terminated in three years ? What 
wonder that they hung Him on a cross ? 

And yet that failure, oh, my brothers, 
stands out to-day the ground — the only 



108 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



ground — of your salvation. When Jesus 
stood there tempted to deny, urged to 
give in, to take back what He said, bribed, 
threatened, urged, implored to be discreet, 
to reconsider, to explain away, He stood 
the test — He utterly refused — He proved 
His tact by clinging to the truth — and the 
result is now that you and I stretch out 
our hands from all this tempest of tempta- 
tion and this shame of sin and cry to Him 
— yes, yes, to Him, that miserable failure, 
that indiscreet, that injudicious man — we 
cry to Him to save us by His love — we 
cling with desperate determination to His 
Blood-stained Cross, emblem of His suc- 
cess of failure, of life through death. 

And why do we do this ? It is because 
we know that He was able to endure all 
things for us, and that He saw the truth, 
and us, and life, not from the stand-point 
of Judea, within the narrow limits of His 



TAGT. 



109 



day on earth, but from the stand-point of 
the everlasting and to the utmost confines 
of the largest life. 

A dreary desert of nineteen long cen- 
turies stretches between us and the Cross 
of Christ, and we can find the way across 
those trackless and shifting sands chiefly 
because of the unbroken line of bleaching 
carcasses of men who for the truth have 
failed, falling down there to be for ever- 
more ghastly but glorious sign-posts on 
the way of life. 

Dead yet speaking : speaking the ever- 
lasting truth. Such, then, is this great 
faculty which God gives men — unconscious 
tact ; the faculty to know the truth, to live 
it, speak it ; the glorious power to bless 
men with the truth of love, which being 
reviled, revileth not again ; blessing when 
it is cursed, patient with a sublimity of 
patience. A tact for getting on, indeed, but 



110 THE LARGER LIFE. 



not for getting on to-day, to-morrow, and 
the next day only ; but for that getting on 
and up into the life of God, through any 
failure and through any pain — tact which 
believes so firmly in what is true and 
right, that it will strive for these against 
all odds, and be content with ultimate 
results alone. Sublime I know is this 
conception of it ; but who will tell me that 
it was not Christ's ? Such was His view 
of a serpent's wisdom, although He fear- 
lessly anticipated man's objection to it by 
frankly owning that the children of this 
world are " wiser than the children of the 
light." Wiser, sharper, more successful 
here ; but in the larger life ? No ! 

(&.) And now a word as to the conscious, 
studied tact which does not come from God, 
and which becomes a menace to the man 
who uses it. 

To make at once the point we have in 



TACT. 



Ill 



mind let us suppose a case. Something is 
to be done. Bonds must be placed upon 
the market, a bachelor must be coralled to 
matrimony, a candidate must be elected, a 
change must be effected of some kind, a 
new condition of affairs be brought about. 

There are objectors. Obstacles will be 
forthcoming. There are eleven obstinate 
men in almost every jury. So you begin 
to engineer. This man must be cajoled, 
that one hoodwinked. This woman and 
her tongue must be admired into the 
ranks. You must agree with every man you 
meet, or make him think so. You must ap- 
pear to be here when you are really there. 

Old people must be coddled ere you can 
safely lead them by the nose. You must 
learn how to twist men round your little 
finger. You get to work. Your schemes 
are nicely laid. The whole thing works, 
I tell you, like a charm. Your popularity 



112 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



grows great. Successes like a chaplet 
crown your brow. The object is attained ; 
the trick's been played ; you have what you 
set out to get. And from your cosey cor- 
ner, not from a cross, you cry, using the 
very words of Him who failed — but oh ! 
with what a different meaning in the words ! 
— you cry that " It is finished ! " But 
what of you yourself when it is finished ? 
You have not finished ? You stand a 
" Jesuit" — and of all things under God's 
honest Heaven a Protestant "Jesuit," 
whose double - minded dodging and lie- 
stained tongue are not like Loyola's whom 
you scorn, " Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam" 
but simply, solely, dastardly — for the 
greater glory and the comfort of yourself! 
" Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers ! how 
can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " 
The difference in essence is just here. 
God urges you to do the wise thing, look- 



TACT. 



113 



ing at your eternal self — not yours, but 
you. Not your successes, not your attain- 
ments, not your work — no ! but your life. 
So that, if you should gain the whole 
world here, and lose your soul, God would 
deny that you had exercised much tact. 

But, on the other hand, the world laughs 
at the man who fails, stands by the Cross 
where you are trying to confess for 
truth, wagging its wicked- wise old head : 
" Others he saved, himself he cannot 
save! He cannot even get himself ad- 
mired ! " 

Well, brothers, come and learn what 
these words mean : " If any man will save 
his life he shall lose it." Another para- 
dox! Tes, issuing in life eternal. Do 
not, at last, misunderstand the Christ. 

There is a golden quality in life which 
every man should seek — sanctified com- 
mon-sense. There is a right way and a 
8 



114 THE LARGER LIFE. 



right time to do all things ; but Christ 
would have us learn that way not by du- 
plicity, but love. It is a matter after all 
of self-respect. 

I, for my part, would rather have my 
own than your respect. I can cheat you 
into respect for me — myself I cannot. 

When I lie down to sleep to-night upon 
my bed, I would rather be friends with 
God and with myself than with the whole 
round world ; and for this reason — that I 
may wake upon a distant shore with only 
God and myself, finding myself therefore, 
among my friends — whereas the friend- 
ship of the world can only bury me, 
mourn me awhile, forget me— leaving me 
lonely, friendless, guilty, upon that distant 
shore where I must walk forever. The 
tact— the tact of God. If I may but 
touch Him, I know I shall be saved. 

" To thine ownself be true, and it must 



TACT. 



115 



follow as the night the clay, thou canst 
not then be false to any man." 

And honesty, if not the best, is cer- 
tainly God's, policy. 




CONTACT. 



CONTACT. 



"I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of 
the world." — S. John xvii. 15. 

A STKONG- man praying for those whom 
He loves more than He loves Himself. A 
man Who has probed human nature to the 
quick, and found it what it is ; a man "Who 
has poured out all that He has and is for 
this bad world, and Whom the world has 
spurned, scoffed at, and will upon the mor- 
row crucify. This man Who with a love 
unspeakable has companied with sinners 
and made his habitation with the lost and 
damned, stands on the night in which He 
was betrayed — the very night when man's 



120 THE LARGER LIFE. 

ingratitude more strong than traitor's arm 
might well have vanquished Him — and 
prays, prays for His friends, prays for the 
men whom God has given Him. And this 
is what He prays : " I pray not that Thou 
shouldst take them out of the world." 

No ! To the world that has rejected 
Him ; to the world that has abused His 
mercy, maligned, misunderstood, out- 
raged Him ; to the world that has proved 
treacherous, and mean, and brutal — to that 
world He is giving what He loves most 
on the earth — His friends ! They would 
go with Him, follow Him, forsake men ; 
but in His agony of love unutterable He 
gives them in His prayers. "Father, I 
pray not that Thou shouldst take them out 
of the world." And in a few days He will 
breathe upon them, ere He leaves them, 
saying, " Go ye into all the world." A 
mother gives the son whom she brought 



CONTACT, 



121 



forth whenever home or country need his 
strong right arm. But Jesus in the hour 
of His heart-breaking dereliction gives 
everything He has, not to defend His 
cause, but to the enemy. 

That prayer which no man ever read 
when grief was blinding him, or when de- 
spair was crushing out his hope, without 
the sense of an enw T rapping and an up- 
lifting mystery of love and power — that 
prayer rings out its agony of brotherhood, 
and its sublime out - reach of altruism 
with unmistakable and irresistible import 
to-day to us who stand thus yearning for 
the larger life. "Back, back," it cries, 
with fierce yet infinitely tender meaning ; 
"back from your selfishness, your greed, 
your Pharisaic separation, your timidity; 
back to the thick of it w T here men who are 
your brothers fight and falter, fall tram- 
pled under foot and die, Back from your 



122 THE LARGER LIFE. 



ease, your comfort, your indifference ; back 
from those optimistic dreams which come 
on cosey winter evenings by the fire. Back 
to the world! Back to mankind! Back 
to your brothers ! Back to the men and 
women for whom Christ died." Look at 
Him as He prays for you. The sweat 
drops have turned into beads of blood, for 
on the last night He must pray so that 
every word shall burn into the conscience 
of the world. He prays for men. He 
wraps the everlasting mantle of His mercy 
about the shivering children of us men. 
Now, if at all, He manifests His will con- 
cerning us who have believed in Him ; 
He manifests His purposes concerning all 
the world. My brothers, this prayer of 
our Lord Christ is a most vivid revelation 
of two things: It is a revelation of the 
love of God ; but then above, beyond this, 
to us who stand to-day endeavoring to 



CONTACT. 



123 



know tlie way into the larger life more 
clearly, it is the revelation of men to man. 
It is the revelation of the laws which ought 
to govern us as man to man. It is, in fact, 
the fullest possible expression of Christ's 
intense desire to consummate that Church 
which in His own sublime conception of it 
must comprehend all men — knit — that is 
His wish — all knit together into One Body 
— a homogeneous, interdepending, sym- 
pathetic union of mankind, in which if one, 
and he the meanest or the humblest, suffer, 
the whole must suffer ; a unified, redeemed, 
transfigured, sanctified humanity, of which 
no man, no class, no grade can quietly 
ignore the least, the lowest, or the basest 
part. A glorious incarnation wide as man 
forcing all individuals into the dignity, the 
destiny and the dimensions of the perfect 
man. His love can brook no narrowing 
of this idea ; His life was counted cheap in 



124 THE LARGER LIFE, 



order that He might proclaim and found 
it ; His doctrines, ethics, and His sociology 
are this, this only, this forever. And so 
He prays us back into the world; He 
would not have us leave it. He does not 
fear the harm which may befall His people 
in the world. But what He does fear is 
that we should turn into that thing which 
He hates most — a selfish life. He hates 
this most. He hedges in unselfishness 
with His sublimest blessings, but lashes 
selfishness with an unutterable scorn. He 
crucifies it on some of His most terrible 
and most incomprehensible paradoxes, 
which culminate in that magnificent aban- 
donment of love : " If any man will save 
his life let him first lose it," a saying which 
the history of all the world makes good. 
And not content with this, He lifts the ti- 
niest, the least significant of mortals, up be- 
fore men's eyes and cries across the chasms 



CONTACT. 



125 



which our sins have made — cries to the 
farthest from Him — that if one give a cup 
of water to a child, He takes it to Himself, 
He thanks you for it — it will assuage the 
thirst — His great Eternal Thirst for the 
love of men. 

With every form of misery, of poverty, 
of sin and of unworthiness Christ has 
identified Himself with this amazing, un- 
reserved, completest substitution of Him- 
self : " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
the least of these My brethren, ye have 
done it unto Me." Contact in the larger 
life, therefore, my brothers, is of the es- 
sence of the Christ-like life. And cer- 
tainly contact means more to-day than 
ever. The call is clear and profound and 
sad ; the opportunity is infinite ; the danger 
terrible. With Jesus in our hearts let us 
think of these things. 



128 THE L AUGER LIFE. 



L 

The call to a larger life — which means 
at this point a wider and a closer contact 
with mankind— is clear and profound and 
sad, as one must see who seriously thinks 
of those immense convulsions and wide- 
spread movements which have already 
changed, and will still more materially 
change, the bases and the circumstances of 
human life. 

One need but think of all that is implied 
in steam, the telegraph, and far above all 
other forces — the modern metropolitan 
newspaper — to realize that if a man has 
ever been in any real sense his brother's 
keeper, he has become to-day tenfold the 
guardian of his fellow men. The news 
which is spread out before you as each 
new day dawns, binds all the nations of 



CONTACT. 



127 



the earth into that closest fellowship of 
which our poor old earth is capable — the 
fellowship of suffering, the brotherhood of 
pain. We are compelled to feel the fee- 
blest, the most distant twinge that racks 
the strained nerves of whatever people in 
whatever land utter their grief in human 
language from broken human hearts. Is 
there a flood in the impenetrable centres 
of the Chinese Empire ? Is there a wail- 
ing group of fish-wives on some rocky 
shore? Does the dark word come up 
from out the bowels of the mines of Kara 
that scores of stout men have been buried 
or burned, and as many names must be 
forthwith attached to the long, bitter bead- 
roll of widows, orphans, destitute, out- 
casts ? I ask, does any human misery or 
human wrong have to pass ghastly, un- 
noticed now along the " narrow aisle of 
pain?" No! 



128 THE LARGER LIFE. 



We are obliged to know it ; we are com- 
pelled to feel ; and he that knows and 
feels has entered into a new and unavoid- 
able relation to the world. But, then, not 
only are these wasting drafts made upon 
our unaccustomed sympathies — for coup- 
led with the news of pains and suffering, 
there comes with ever-increasing clearness 
a voice which points to those deep-rooted, 
privilege - entrenched, time - honored (or 
dishonored) wrongs, which like some con- 
stitutional disease cause the contortions, 
the grimaces, and the eruptions upon the 
surface. And to be conscious of a wrong 
and not to be prepared to do whatever lies 
within one's power to set it right, is in the 
altitudes of Christian ethics held to be 
guilty of the wrong itself. Uncomfortable 
doctrine this. And so we shrug our 
shoulders, shed the tear of pity, say with 
the first of human brothers, Am I my 



CONTACT. 



129 



brother's keeper ? I'm very sorry that 
this thing has happened ; hope I may 
never hear of it again. I'm sorry, very 
sorry that Canal Street* is such a bad 
place. I'm very sorry indeed that women, 
finding it impossible to live on sixteen 
cents a day, are driven out into the world 
en route to hell. It grieves me very much 
to hear the bitter cry of outcast London ; 
I really cried when I walked through 
some New York streets with two police- 
men, when I beheld the women's pinched, 
starved, hopeless faces and children's also, 
and human beings huddled in a sty of 
filth, and of disease and sin. And really, 
sitting by my study fire I felt quite miser- 
able and full of shame as I perused the 
Forum for last month, with Bishop Hunt- 
ington's terrific article upon the Church 
and Her relations to the rich and poor. 
* The Wnitechapel of Buffalo, 

9 



130 THE LARGER LIFE. 



But, then, what can I do ? It certainly 
is not my fault. I try to do my duty, 
mind my own affairs, go on the even tenor 
of my way. 

Well, brothers, it would seem a fright- 
ful thing, a blank, cold, stern, and hope- 
less, godless stand, this one of laissez 
/aire of letting things alone — of minding 
my own business, saying my pious soul, 
getting into my Heaven, into the arms of 
my good God, and letting everybody else 
suffer, and sin, and bear impossible, un- 
speakable outrages, die, perish everlast- 
ingly, with only an expression of regret 
from us — a priestly passing by upon the 
other side, or a levitical stopping for a 
moment to look compassionately down at 
the poor wretch. Can we do nothing for 
the world ? 



CONTACT. 



131 



II. 

We have said that the call to life is 
clear and profound and sad, and we must, 
as we are true to Him in Whom we have 
believed, maintain that there is opportun- 
ity, immediate, infinite for us to do that 
special something for the world which it 
was God's eternal purpose we should do. 
My brothers, as this truth takes hold of 
you, believe me, life becomes transfigured 
into glory. Yes ! as the wave on wave of 
earth's long tyranny of wrong and suffer- 
ing sweeps to our feet, in every book we 
read, in every morning's news, in every 
contact with the dumb, dull, breaking 
heart of human want — I say that as this 
wave on wave of woe comes to our open- 
ing manhood, washing the white, drowned 
faces of the lost up to our very feet, two 



132 THE LARGER LIFE. 



forces fierce as fury meet within our souls 
— a force which would succeed in driving 
us upon the heights of personal security 
and maudlin sentiment, if God were not 
in Heaven ; and then another force which 
does succeed in every life which leans on 
God — the force which sweeps a man into 
that rapture incomparable among the rush 
of feelings which can lift a man — the 
sense that one can save men, the sense 
that one can drink some of the drops of 
agony which someone else would other- 
wise have had to drink, the glorious sense 
which can alone make it worth while to 
live, the sense of true participation in the 
work of Christ, a work which knows one 
only principle, one only fruit — namely, 
that he that saveth others, must first of 
all be willing to lose himself. Opportun- 
ity ! Why, brothers, your wife, your chil- 
dren, your servants, your acquaintances, 



CONTACT. 133 

your clerks, your fellow-citizens, are your 
immediate, your unfailing chance. With 
every one of these Christ has identified 
Himself in such a desperately real and 
awful way, that in their persons He con- 
fines Himself — their injuries are His in- 
juries, their wrongs His wrongs, their joys 
His joys — all this by virtue of that Incar- 
nation-truth which our emasculated Chris- 
tianity has long almost ignored. 

Refuse to hold yourself responsible for 
suffering ; keep on the even tenor of your 
selfish way ; continue to inquire who ever 
made you keeper of your brother's soul, 
and you will find this very Saviour whom 
you love and worship, this Jesus Christ to 
whom you build your gorgeous temples, 
this King of kings out of whose kingdom 
you practically keep out those who are 
His own, yes, He will meet you, for His 
words fail not, and say to you, " Depart 



134 THE LARGER LIFE. 



from me, I never knew you ; " the widow 
and the outcast, the prisoner and the un- 
worthy, the lost, the suffering, the wronged 
and the neglected — all of that multitude 
whose keeper you so constantly declared 
that you were not, for whose condition 
you were not responsible — they, they will 
rise up as so many witnesses against you, 
and as the Saviour of mankind gathers 
these aching human heads, these broken 
hearts, these nameless human wrecks, into 
His bosom to rest them there, He will cry 
out with a convicting nearness to the 
truth, that, " Inasmuch as ye did it not to 
these, ye did it not to Me." 



III. 

But, brothers, from one end of Christen- 
dom quite to the other there has gone 
forth a thrill as of awakening sympathy — 



CONTACT. 



135 



a mighty life-throb making for larger life. 
And snrely we have not escaped its 
blessed power — surely no one of us holds 
himself quite indifferent to these things. 

More Christian men, let us begin to 
think, are asking, " "What can I do for 
men ? " than merely, " Need I do any- 
thing? 5 ' Organized Christianity has set 
itself to the solution of that one great prob- 
lem which, it is strange to think, it has so 
long neglected. Those unifying influences 
of which we have already spoken, make 
questions in America important in Japan, 
and the experiments of Europe benefit 
Asia. Labor is rapidly becoming world- 
wide in its combined and sympathetic in- 
tercommunion. Ethics and politics are 
wedded now in sacramental wedlock, which 
holds not only through the better, richer, 
healthier, but also in the worse, the poorer, 
the sicklier changes and chances of man's 



136 THE LARGER LIFE. 



development. But while tlie intellectual 
and moral forces of the world array them- 
selves for the solution of our human prob- 
lem, the individual remains in helpless 
and confused indifference, or when more 
deeply touched, grows maddened by the 
thought of so much wrong and pain and 
his own impotent and puny effort. It is, 
therefore, to us as individuals who would 
do what we ought, if we but knew just 
what our duty is, that such a revelation 
of our Lord's desire comes with a practi- 
cal and helpful weight. The danger of 
aroused responsibility confronted by ap- 
parent helplessness is terrible and twofold. 
It threatens us with pessimistic fatalism 
ending in more or less indifference or de- 
spair ; or, on the other hand, it threatens us 
with optimistic selfishness and laissez-faire, 
which ends in that which brings about 
French Revolutions and dilettanteism. 



CONTACT. 



137 



As followers of Christ, our clanger is tlie 
first. We don't know what to do. Well, 
then, Christ tells us. Stay in the world ! 
Keep close to every human thing and 
thought. The field — your field — is the 
next man. Whatever happens, pray do not 
run away from him ! Men are living about 
you, they are working about you, they are 
suffering about you, they are dying about 
you. 

Heart to heart, face to face, life to life ! 
You will discover some sublime potential- 
ities, some splendid aspirations in the 
most brutal outcast of the street, and it 
is only in the isolation and the darkness 
of a selfish life that hell brings forth its 
twins — despair and doubt. 

Out then into the world, each one of us, 
to live and die where God shall deem it 
best — to work for others. 

Yield to the nobleness that tries to 



138 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



thrust itself at times upon your paltriness. 
Yes, even we feel called upon to stand out 
into heroism and the championship and 
the defence of what is weak and wronged. 

There comes into the conscience of the 
world a wave of splendid indignation as it 
comes into truer contact with itself. Here 
is our place ; this is our only hope. Let 
us not shut our eyes ; let us strain eye 
and ear ; let us hear and see and heed it 
every whit. It does us good to 'know — al- 
ways. When you go home take down 
".Bleak House," and read the last two 
pages of Chapter XVI., and then come 
back and tell God that you mean to live 
as though that awful picture had never 
met your eyes. 

" Our Father— that's very good, says Jo. 
Art in heaven — is the light comin', sir ? 
It is close at hand. . . . Hallowed be 
thy — The light is come upon the dark, 



CONTACT. 



139 



benighted way. Dead ! Dead, your Maj- 
esty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. 
Dead, Et. Revs, and Wrong Revs, of every 
order. Dead, men and women, born with 
Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And 
dying thus around us every day." 



AIMS. 



AIMS. 



" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." 

— Psalm cxxi. 1. 

We have been passing now for many 
weeks, oh earnest men and women, among 
the magnitudes and splendors of the lar- 
ger life. 

One hour each week I have been asking 
you to spend with me beneath the shad- t 
ows of those sublime ideals which loom 
more and more grandly above our modern 
life. But with whatever calm, whatever 
aspirations, or it may be, indifference, we 
have sat here in silent contemplation of 
these things, we have passed out — out 
from the quiet and the Presence, into that 



144 THE LARGER LIFE. 



real life of fact and struggle which, be our 
dreams and fancies what they may, is our 
true life, the life which will alone stand 
out, enter into account, tell one way or an- 
other, in that eternal face to face with 
God, when all our dreams and unrealities 
and visions shall have rolled by like mist 
before the morning. 

It is one thing to live amid enthusiasms, 
heroisms, action— and quite another thing 
to live, and feel, and do. 

" There is one glory of the sun and an- 
other glory of the moon," but the moon 
would have no glory if the sun should 
cease to shine. 

There are books, and men, and actions — 
many such in times like ours — which lend 
light and strength and beauty to the gen- 
eral life of man. But the best book ends 
on some page, and the wise men die and 
perish like the ignorant and foolish, and 



AIMS. 



145 



the action which is grandest fades as 
quickly as its day. 

And this leaves us, earnest brothers, 
with that hunger at our hearts — hunger 
for a something lasting, thirst for what 
can never die. 

Face to face with men and movements 
such as glorify our age, it were strange, in- 
deed, if any failed to catch a little light ; 
but that sense of desolation which weighs 
down upon your soul — that implies your 
full-moon splendor is a cold and barren 
thing — a reflection of the true light — 
doomed to wane and wane and die. Let 
the earth once get between you and the 
sun which lends you light, and you lie 
there in your orbit totally eclipsed, 
opaque; bound to earth by unseen fet- 
ters, wedded to it by the law. Hunger, 
thirst, unrest and darkness — these our 

souls know even now while we bask and 
10 



146 THE LARGER LIFE. 



work and revel in the nineteenth-century 
glare. 

On, on, on through the tortuous defiles 
of the terrible valley of doubt — on, by the 
base of the range of the mountains of 
God, marches mankind. On past the 
heights of attainment and the foot-hills of 
hope ; on by the cities of culture, which, 
built as they are on the hills of high 
knowledge can never be hid ; on, on, by 
the Sinais of what is revealed, and the 
mounts of transfigured and glorified love ; 
on, by the lowly magnificent Place of the 
Skull — on, 'neath the shadows of peaks 
whence the prophets have looked, by the 
thousand hills covered with cattle — all 
God's, and the mountains from out of 
whose bowels thou mayest dig brass ; 
and the terrace on terrace of fortified 
strength, and the craters whence issue the 
terrible floods of social upheaval, and the 



AIMS. 



147 



heights, bank on bank, of the progress and 
prowess of man — on, by the calm and 
the grandeur, the peace and repose, and 
the strength of the hills everlasting. Dumb, 
sad, plodding moves the innumerable host 
of the children of men. 

Now and again as word comes down to 
us that some one has attained a height, a 
thrill of thankfulness, a little start of emu- 
lation, makes itself felt to-day, to-morrow 
dies. A Father Damian reaches, torn and 
bleeding, up to the splendid heights of 
martyrdom and waves the sign — we see it, 
recognize it, sing Te Deum. 

A Stanley suddenly emerges from Dark- 
est Africa, wasted by fevers, aged by dis- 
ease and want, and as he takes his place 
on the proud eminence of hero, civilization 
worships and applauds. A German phys- 
icist works, works as a German student 
only can work, thirty unutterably plodding 



148 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



years, captures his microbe, gives it to the 
world, and from the valley of our pain and 
weakness, we see him plant the standard 
of relief just that much higher. Quite un- 
announced one day a book appears, and 
lo ! the sunlight rests upon a whole new 
range of far-off hills, and all of us can see 
that many have set off in their direction — 
that many reach the very summit of the 
new-found hills. 

From crag to crag, from beetling peak 
to peak, echoes the thunder of the call to 
life. Steeples and chimneys, towers and 
homestead gables spring ever from new 
heights, ever ascending, ever developing, 
ever, we hear, built nearer to God. But 
the dumb, dim multitudes march on, hear- 
ing, indeed, of what is done above, blessed 
and encouraged, let us hope, by it, but 
ever marching on and on, through that sad 
valley of decision, where doubt means 



AIMS. 



149 



death, and from whose shadows only they 
escape who hear the call which comes to 
larger life, and make with all their souls 
in the direction of the hills of God. We 
hear the call to life. 

There sweeps into the humdrum of our 
life a sudden rush of feeling, a flood of 
light. We are caught up by some man's 
heroism, by some one's faith ; we are ex- 
alted for a day among the saints ; we 
breathe the bracing' air, we see the king- 
doms of the world and all their splendor 
stretched out before us ; we are as giants ; 
we look into the face of God and die not. 
There is a glory of some rising sun, and so 
the dark opaqueness of our moon glows 
out with borrowed glory for that summer 
night. 

And then — well, brothers, then comes 
that which each heart knoweth and which 
has no name. If I should call it hunger, 



150 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



you would declare it thirst ; if I should 
say that it is only doubt, you would con- 
vince me that it is sin or remorse, or 
shame. Each heart — -each heart alone 
knows what that bitterness can be w T hich 
honeycombs desire and blasts attainment, 
and mocks success. And thus with broken 
hearts we travel on doing the best we can, 
thankful for glimpses of the distant hills, 
gladdened by news that comes to us from 
those who rise. True, now and then, right 
from our very side, some one makes off in 
the direction of some height of life. We 
wonder at it, we rejoice, perhaps ; but we 
push on along the intricacies of the valley 
of our deferred decision, and gradually the 
memory and influence of those who rise 
die out. Brothers, this must not always 
be. This will not bring us at the end to 
peace. 

It is of this supreme temptation to de- 



AIMS. 



151 



spair of life, or at the most to live only in 
so much of the true life as we can catch 
from others — to have no hopes, no aims, 
no raptures of anticipation, no peace of 
personal ascent toward God — that I would 
have you think of as we speak to-day. 

What if the light should come to us 
here, now ? What if we could believe in 
that intensity of faith which brings forth 
actions, that we might rise and reach the 
very utmost bounds of life's own everlast- 
ing hills? What, if into the dull-ache of 
our life something — the thing, might come 
which would cause us to start — start now, 
right from the old Church of our love, 
right from the friends and the associations 
of our whole long life — right from our 
knees before this fair sweet Altar-portal 
into life — to start, my brothers, now and 
here, up toward the hills of life beyond 
the clouds, on that ineffable ascent which 



152 THE LARGER LIFE. 



ends in God ? Oh ! what if that should 
be the thing to make this day burn into 
memory forever? Now, as I read the 
text, will you not say it with me — say it 
each broken, anxious, doubtful heart — say 
it and feel it ? "I will lift up mine eyes 
unto the hills, from whence cometh my 
help ! " 

I will look up unto the hills from which 
my help — my help, the help I need, shall 
come, if only I can look up steadily and 
watch and wait ! 

It is of aims, therefore, that we must 
think to-day. The aims which are our 
only title to the larger life ; the aims 
which hope and faith wedded in charity 
bring forth ; the aims which lift the eyes, 
the heart, the intellect, the soul, to life 
and God. 

Unto the hills, therefore, lift up your 
eyes. Majestic, range on range, they pile 



AIMS. 



153 



away toward God. From height to height 
the intellect and heart aspire, if haply 
they may find out where in the increate 
light of perfect, cloudless day, Peace 
dwells. To them that sit in darkness and 
in the shadow of death, comes from the 
everlasting hills, the fastnesses of God, the 
word of inspiration and of life. 

The hills from which my help shall 
come : which be they ? Let us consider 
this. 

I. 

" There is a green hill far away with- 
out a city w^all, where our dear Lord was 
crucified, Who died to save us all." 

A little hill just by a city gate, and on 
its brow a man hangs dying on a Cross. 
Let us look at Him as He hangs there for 
us. I will lift up mine eyes to that poor 
hill of Crucifixion, oh my soul ! and learn 



154 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



of Him Who teaches from that awful place. 
Down in this deep, dark desolation of my 
life how can I come to know the meaning 
of that Man ? The hill is not so very high 
nor steep, if one were strong, and could 
get near enough to hear and see. But 
from this distance ? The last analysis of 
every soul's distress reveals sin at the 
core and root, and those who might repulse 
all grosser forms of sin are guilty of those 
sins of doubting and despair which lie 
across our spiritual door barring escape. 

If we could be entirely honest with our 
own selves, brothers, we would cry out to- 
day : " My sins have taken such a hold on 
me I am not able to look up." And so 
around the base of Calvary, disheartened 
sweeps the countless, hopeless multitude 
of dying men. 

Up to the Crucified I will lift up mine 
eyes, and learn that He has washed away 



AIMS. 



155 



my sin. And as I look, behold there 
stand beside the Cross of Jesus two I 
know : His Mother, Mary blessed above 
women, and that disciple whom, above all 
the rest, He loved. Hear what that holy 
Mother said of this, Her Son, that day 
the Holy Ghost had overshadowed Her: 
"He hath filled the hungry with good 
things." He shall satisfy us, oh, my 
brothers — He alone. Hear also what S. 
John saith : "If any man sin, we have an 
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the 
Righteous, and He is the propitiation for 
our sins." 

But He that teacheth from the Hill of 
Crucifixion, teacheth of more than the 
forgiveness of our sins. The mystery of 
sin is not the only cloud through which 
we have to grope and struggle tow T ard 
the light of life. There is at any rate 
one more, wrapping its most inexplicable 



156 THE LARGER LIFE. 



folds about all the hearts of men — the 
mystery of suffering. 

Up to the Hill of Suffering caught up, 
transfigured into Glory, lift now your eyes. 
Behold, and see if there be any sorrow 
like unto His sorrow — His Who hangs 
there, so pitying, patient, dumb. 

Not a high hill, this one of agony and 
mortal pain; Jesus Himself will not re- 
main content there. He will aspire to 
reach the topmost altitudes of conquest 
and of power ; but, then, before it shall 
be said that He ascended up on high, it 
must be shown that He has led captivity 
captive. 

Learn that, O world of aspirations and 
desires maddened by failure. Perfect 
through suffering, glows like a beacon 
from our hill of help, and yet we would de- 
vise some other principle of growth, some 
not so bitter process of attainment for 



AIMS. 



157 



ourselves, our children. Learn, then, from 
Calvary from whence our help comes — 
learn how to suffer. Not a high hill, this 
green hill far away, but from its coronet 
of Crosses learn one more thing. 

Learn self- surrender. What are they 
saying as they sit there watching ? "What 
ribald taunt is bandied there among those 
wagging heads ? This, verily : " This 
man saved others ; Himself He cannot 
save." And that taunt, oh my brothers, is 
of the very essence of the gospel now cul- 
minating there. He did, indeed, save 
others, and it was just because He would 
not spare Himself. Our eyes strain up to 
catch the sunlight on the distant hills — 
the mountain-ranges of heroic strength 
and grand success, or farther still, we 
would behold the light that never shone on 
land or sea, which bathes forever the vast 
dim dome of Peace. But not until we 



158 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



learn from Golgotha what sacrifice of self 
implies and is, can we expect to reach any 
true height, except, indeed, it were that 
one " bad eminence " where selfish pride 
fools men into the fancy that they are ex- 
alted, and leaves them presently to be de- 
voured by vultures, or casts them, Satan- 
like, headlong into the burning lake. 
From that mean Hill of self-forgetting 
love, comes help. 

Let it not come too late. Christ Cruci- 
fied would aid. " The help that is done on 
the earth, He doeth it Himself." 

II. 

The hills stand round about Jerusalem. 
The fastnesses to which a man pursued 
may flee are many ; the hills from whence 
help comes stand round about the valley 
of decision, peak on peak. But to one 



AIMS. 



159 



more alone have we now time to look — 
" The hill of Zion." " The hill of Zion is 
a fair place, and the joy of the whole 
earth." I will lift up mine eyes to see 
that wondrous citadel which can't be hid ; 
I will go round about her, mark well her 
bulwarks, tell the towers thereof. When 
will the world find peace and life eternal 
in the Church ? When will you men and 
women know Her as she is, the city which 
hath foundations, the very ground and pil- 
lar of the Truth, the Bride of Christ ? 

Up to the hills, see how the eyes of men 
are lifted — the mountains of achievement 
and the pride of life ? 

Is there a precipice so high, so horrible, 
that men dare not ascend it ? — and for 
what, think you? Why, eider-down, to 
cushion and to comfort that which God 
only can. 

Are there recesses of the mountains so 



160 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



remote, so filled with beasts of prey, so 
barred by dangers, that men dare not to 
penetrate them to find gold, or coal ? Are 
there such freaks of speculation that mod- 
ern thinkers dare not to venture on such 
dizzy heights ? Are there such barriers 
of adamant that patient, plodding, and per- 
sistent commerce will not be able to tun- 
nel through ? Or, finally, where is the 
snow-capped crag, the treacherous glacier, 
that human enterprise will not ascend for 
gain or sport ? Up, up, into the blue im- 
mensity we look ; we grow familiar with 
the most sublime ; the eager world would 
reach the loftiest, best. 

Then why does conscience keep on say- 
ing to my soul that she should flee to one 
fair hill that is not high nor great ? 

It is because God must have chosen it 
from all the rest to give His help there. 
" Why hop ye so ye high hills ? " asks the 



AIMS. 



161 



awakened soul; "this is God's hill in 
which it hath pleased Him to dwell." 

There is a prophecy that one day men 
will say to the hills, "Fall on us." 

That day has come to everyone of us 

who eyer tried to find true peace on any 

other mountain than the Church of God. 

Resources, but not peace, abound in all 

the mountains of your human might. 

Knowledge, not wisdom, may be found on 

all the heights of life. Exploits, but not 

attainment reward your daring. If I go 

up to Heaven or down to Hell — thither 

Thy Spirit follows me — there comes the 

thirst for God. I will lift up once more 

mine eyes to look about the hills. The 

city of Peace. The hill whence help — help 

for me — can come. I see Her now. I see 

the pilgrims winding from the valley ; 

through all of Her twelve gates streams in 

the countless host. I see the curling in- 
11 



162 THE LARGER LIFE. 



cense rising up to Heaven. I hear the 
sweet, unearthly chanting of the priests. 
I hear the laugh of boys and girls, playing 
in all the streets thereof. And still the 
pilgrims wind up countless from the val- 
ley. I will arise. I will lift up mine eyes 
to see the Bride, the Lamb's wife as, in 
all verity, She is. And help will come ; 
for " God is in the midst of Her ; God 
shall help Her, and that right early." 



ENDS. 



ENDS. 



" . . . the end everlasting life." 

— Romans vi. 22. 

We stand at the meeting-place of two 
eternities. "We have been looking during 
the Sunday mornings of the past two 
months at the immensities and splendors 
of the larger life. Starting, as you re- 
member, with merely the conviction of 
that simplest creed : " I am," we have 
allowed the sv/eeping cycles, reach on 
reach, of the unutterable majesty of life to 
pass before us — coming, at length, last 
Sunday to where we started — meeting our 
own souls face to face, demanding of 
them there in the impassable defiles of the 



166 THE LARGER LIFE. 



valley of decision, on pain of death, what 
they proposed to do with life, what were 
their aims, their purposes, their hopes. 

And as we passed all up and down the 
pain-pierced ranks of that innumerable 
host of men who are and live in earnest, 
we thought w^e heard one ever-deepening 
word-throb pulsing from heart to heart — 
" Up to the hills ! " — we thought we felt 
an irresistible new ground-swell of emotion 
moving all men, a force of inspiration 
sweeping the old w r orld on : " Up to the 
hills" — up to the everlasting hills from 
which help comes. All that man's life has 
been, all that it may be, loomed up on 
either hand, above the valley of our doubt 
and death, range upon range of rightness, 
peak upon peak of power. But from the 
dizzy heights of speculation with no God, 
souls dash themselves, or lie there like 
Prometheus bound upon the bleak, bad 



ENDS. 



167 



eminence of intellectual pride. On moun- 
tain-tops of might — on the vast fascinating 
heights of mere success — the hunger that 
is in man finds no food — the driven soul 
finds no rest certain and secure for her 
torn feet. All over those eternal hills 
man's eyes and aspirations have sought 
peace, but finds it not in any lasting sort, 
as we maintain, until he sees those hills 
that lie about Jerusalem of old. " There 
is a green hill far away, without that city 
wall," and close to it that hill of Zion 
fairest on the earth. Christ and the 
Church, in plainer words, furnish the 
grounds and sphere wherein a man may 
reach the measure of the fulness of the 
perfect man. 

To-day we reach the end of this our 
contemplation of the larger life. 

What word stands facing us as we come 
back from such a pilgrimage through 



168 THE LARGER LIFE. 



splendors to our own sad selves ? What 
thought comes pressing to the front 
through all that rush of thought which 
sweeps across the reaches of an earnest 
life ? What sign must rise up in the path 
before us men the moment we confess the 
call and make one single upward step tow- 
ard larger life ? And, above all, what 
question booms above the roar and rash, 
the majesty, the progress of our life? 
What exclamation welcomes each new 
startling deed? Above all avenues to 
knowledge and to power what legend may 
be seen? Beneath all movements and be- 
yond all views, the keynote of all changes 
and all promises — is what ? Higher than 
hope itself, deeper than doubt, the other 
name of death — is what ? 

Progress, development, and evolution 
spring from what ? And as the spies and 
vanguard of the world come back, bearing 



ENDS. 



169 



the mammoth tokens of all lands of prom- 
ise, what shout goes up with that com- 
mingling of hope and fear which is the 
very birth-mark of our age ? 

My brothers, as we stand upon the 
brink of such a future — we, the result and 
evidence of such a past — we cannot from 
our hearts frame sentences of certitude, 
articulate new Creeds — we can do ab- 
solutely nothing more than stammer : 
Whither ? 

And whither is the word this age has 
learned ; for from the very axioms of life 
up, with a sweep which dazzles while it 
lures, man has subpoenaed nature to take 
oath and witness, and nature now gives this 
strange new testimony — nothing but truth. 

The whole Truth, possibly, some new 
day will demand — just as the past has 
been content simply with Truth. 

But, from the axiomatic bases of all 



170 



THE LARGER LIEE. 



things, up to the wildest summits of all 
abstract thought, the licking flame of 
doubt and of unpitying analysis has swept 
devouring. No matter if there be an un- 
seen world, no matter if whole continents 
of Truth do lie beyond those trackless 
oceans of the unsubstantial w T hich sur- 
round us, what this age asks, what it in- 
sists upon, what it is getting desperately 
stroke by stroke, is that what is not true 
shall be hacked off from what is true and 
burned forever. 

Up to to-day, therefore, the world has 
asked for Truth ; to-morrow ? possibly, the 
w r orld may seek and find all Truth ; but for 
to-day with that determination of unyield- 
ing yearning which ploughs the long, sad 
furrows on its brow, To-day is clamoring 
for nothing but the Truth. Up to the bar 
of a relentless Reason the very principles 
of what has been are summoned. Notli- 



ENDS. 



171 



ing so sacred, or so old, but must stand the 
test — nothing too privilege - entrenched, 
too moored to precedent. Everything is 
to be tried to-day ; and be rejected, if in 
the balances of thought it be found want- 
ing. What wonder then if Whither coils 
as a serpent-like interrogation mark in 
every path, biting its venom of unrest, its 
poison of suspense into the otherwise all- 
conquering heel of giant man. The ele- 
ment of fear eats like a cancer now into 
the vitals of the strongest purpose. The 
day begins and culminates and ends in 
Whither ? The mysteries thicken and the 
wonders blaze ; a universe of possibility 
is found each day. Nothing can now again 
surprise us; the harmony has grown so 
intricate, so weird, so grand. The pace 
grows swift. We rush from thought to 
act, from knowledge to possession, and 
from man to God. 



172 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



The Zeitgeist waves above the chorus of 
this last decade a furious baton, so that in 
France they have the phrase, "fin du sie- 
cle" meaning whatever is extreme, out- 
rageous, ultra, the tempo having now be- 
come so pell-mell, boisterous, that anything 
beyond the bounds of moderation and of 
order is due to the carousing witch-dance 
of the expiring century — a mad extrava- 
ganza of chaotic movement to which no 
dancers but the Furies can keep step. 

And we, my earnest brothers, live amid 
it all. No man lives to himself. There 
are no real spectators of this our Human 
Drama. No ; " all the world' s a staofe 
and everyone of us an actor. So that we 
cannot speak of questions of the day in 
the third person. We cannot float along 
shut up in cosey arks upon the troubled 
surface of these rising floods. I am "fin 
du silele " — you are yourself ; for better 



ENDS. 



173 



and for worse, for richer, poorer, in sick- 
ness and in health we are bound up — we 
ought to be — we must be — bound up, my 
brothers, in this one universal life of man 
on earth. 

"Homo sum; nihil humanum alienum 
milii puto." Learn that ; it is the Gospel of 
the twentieth century — learn it because it 
brings us face to face with that which can 
alone lift us into the larger life. Whither? 
which we have found to be the age-word, 
the sober Anglo-Saxon, common-sense 
translation of the too Frenchy phrase. 
W hither ? therefore, becomes the cry of 
every soul which feels its own inevitable 
participation in the larger life — the bit- 
ter cry of every man whose children, and 
whose children's children carry his mortal 
interest, his desperate worry, beyond the 
narrow confines of his own brief life. 

As we began in personality let us, to- 



174 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



day complete our study of the larger life 
with this one thought of Whither ? as it 
most truly is the individual's most con- 
sequential, most all-reaching question. I 
am. I will be. I will be forever ; on 
these three steps hewn from the rock of 
our profoundest conscience we rise to the 
sublimest aspirations and the saddest fears. 

There are two answers now as there 
have always been. The world from the 
beginning has moved toward life or death. 
And to each human soul that ever came 
into this conflict-life, two issues were pre- 
sented from the first, two ends, two ulti- 
mates, two homes, have been held out to 
men — and as the generations of the dead 
slip out from us into the mystery of 
silence, where they can make no sign, all 
that we know of them is this one thing, 
that they have moved, are moving still, no 
doubt, in the direction of the one or other. 



ENDS. 



175 



Upward or downward, lifeward or 
deathward, Godward or earthward, must 
each action tend. The whole dark world 
has known this from the first. And when 
the Light of all the world appeared, bring- 
ing both life and immortality to light — 
throwing the white, pure revelation of the 
Truth on life, what did He show us but 
these same two paths? What did He 
offer to the dying world? He offered it 
the knowledge of the way of life. He 
promised to walk through it with His 
Blood-stained Feet. So that St. Paul's 
magnificent antithesis, from which the 
text is taken, is that philosophy of conflict 
and that rule of life, which conscience 
witnesses, Christ teaches, and all History 
proves. And at this cross-road — here 
where the two Ways fork, we men and 
women stand and must decide. Whither ? 
Oh ! Whither am I being swept in this re- 



176 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



lentless cataract of Time ? Toward God ? 
Toward Larger Life? Toward Peace? Or 
am I swiftly, surely, and with a broken 
heart drifting to deathless death ? 



I. 



Look at the only two alternatives to- 
day. Do you remember that terrible pas- 
sage in grim Carlyle where he speaks of 
how life may be trammelled and lost, 
how the highest born of creation, a man, 
"lies drowning in despicablest puddles; 
the priceless gift of life which he can have 
but once, for he waited a whole Eternity to 
be born, and now has a whole Eternity 
waiting to see what he will do now that he 
is born, this priceless gift we see strangled 
slowly out of him by innumerable pack- 
threads ; bandaged up by nurses, by 



ENDS. 



177 



pedagogues, by posture - masters, and the 
tongues of innumerable old women (named 
' force of public opinion '), by prejudice, 
by custom, by want of knowledge, want of 
money, want of strength, into, say . . . 
the pitifulest, straight - laced, common - 
place existence ; and there remains of 
the glorious Possibility, which we fondly 
named Man, nothing but an inanimate 
mass of foul loss and disappointment, 
which we wrap in shrouds and bury under- 
ground. To the Thinker here lies Tragedy 
enough ; the epitome and marrow of all 
Tragedy whatsoever." 

Now, there is always something gro- 
tesquely horrible about Caiiyle as he spits 
out his keen satirical denunciation ; but 
through the blackness of his outraged bit- 
terness, we are compelled to feel the force, 
the irresistible and the convicting force, of 
Truth. 

12 



178 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



Oh, earnest brothers, what are we doing 
with life ? We can speak of its present 
immensity ; we can, we must partake of 
somewhat of its splendor and its power ; 
we hear the call to life, we feel the im- 
pulse ; we slave, we strive and cry and 
reach, we meet with more success, reach 
higher grounds, accumulate more wealth, 
know more, want more, have more, do 
more, plan more in one year now, than 
did our fathers in their whole long lives. 
But, serious men and women, when we 
look in, not out, when w T e look up, not 
down, when we exclaim Eternity ! not 
Time ; when someone's death close to us, 
or some break in life, when pain or con- 
science or the Holy Ghost, when inward 
movement or when outward force tears 
from us that one breathless, that impatient 
Whither ? Then no hyperboles of pessi- 
mistic seers, no white-hot lava of Carlyle 



ENDS. 



179 



volcanoes, seems to us to be one whit 
more than true. 

No ; as the single soul stands out from 
the advancing columns of the sons of men, 
it feels its littleness, its hopelessness, its 
coming death. 

And it is only as we do stand thus apart 
from others that we are ourselves — only as 
we compel ourselves to comprehend what 
the persistency of personality implies, 
just what it means, that we will be our- 
selves, no more no less, through any and 
all changes, dissolutions, deaths, through 
and beyond those days themselves when 
heaven no less than earth shall pass 
away, the very elements all melt with fer- 
vent heat, and only God and we ourselves 
remain — only as we know this and act 
upon it, do we in any sense begin to live. 

And yet just in proportion to our abil- 
ity to get these looks at life from such a 



180 



THE LARGER LIFE. 



standpoint, does disappointment, hunger 
of doubt, dull-pain of never answered ques- 
tion, crush us down. 

Cheat life, hoodwink yourself, drug 
conscience, stupefy your soul; in other 
words, live happily. What conies of it ? 
What end is reached? You know. The 
wages are paid promptly — Death. 

Death, not of ceasing heart-throb, glaz- 
ing of eyes, corruption, dampness, decay 
of tombs — no, to that death which seemed 
to innocence so cold and black, sin flings 
itself as a surcease of sorrows ; but Death 
of hope, corruption of desire, pallor and 
dissolution of the sense of life ; this Death 
is paid to us before we sleep each night, 
to the last farthing's worth that we have 
earned during the rattling, rushing, busi- 
ness of the day. 

Tossing on sleepless pillows this very 
night the broken-hearted millions of man- 



ENDS. 



181 



kind will send an inarticulate low moan to 
God: Indeed, indeed, thou Christ, thou 
wondrous Son of God, what does it profit 
us who have gained all the world and lost 
our souls ? 

IL 

Near the Strong Son of God let us, in 
closing, kneel, and look at the alternative 
— that call to largest life, of which He is 
the Truth, to which He only is the "Way — 
in which whoever lives shall never die. 

Here where the two roads part, those 
roads which look alike, which promise 
each to lead to undiscovered reaches of 
the soul, stands Jesus Christ. To every 
breathless hope and eager yearning, to 
every boundless fancy and to true ambi- 
tion, to every intellectual aspiration, to 
commercial zeal, to every noble or ex- 
alted purpose of a life, He is the way, 



182 THE LARGER LIFE. 



the living way, because — and here is the 
quintessence of the larger life — because, 
by way of Jesus Christ, man reaches 
absolutely any measure of success or 
power, but does not end there — by way 
of Jesus Christ a man so passes through 
and uses temporal things that finally 
he does not lose the things eternal. 
Anchored by the immovable belief that 
neither height nor depth, nor principali- 
ties nor powers, nor things to come, nor 
life nor death, can ever separate him from 
the life of God, with what superb aban- 
donment and what sublime success a. 
man might fling himself into an age like 
* this ? Churchmen ! for you, as for no 
others, lie unknown the fertile regions of 
the world's true life. 

Ye must go in and pioneer for God. 
To you is given now the glorious task of 
claiming for the Lord Jehovah, these Con- 



ENDS. 



183 



tinents of Science and of Truth and Power 
of which this dying age begins to hear 
dim news. 

You see the kind of grapes the spies 
are bringing ; they shall become the wine 
that maketh glad the heart of man — the 
very Cup of Blessing for the Sins of men 
— or they shall be trod down in the wine- 
presses of the wrath of God, and all the 
world grow drunk with sensuous selfish- 
ness and greed. 

Ye see — the day has dawned sufficiently 
— ye see the wheat they bring, great 
golden sheafs of it as high as man. It 
shall be kneaded into the Bread of Life 
for all the nations, or it shall be stacked 
up to mildew in some Egyptian granary 
of greed, whence famishing mankind 
(your children's children) shall buy it 
grain by grain, and at the cost of blood, 
a drop for every grain. 



184 THE LARGER LIFE. 



Ye hear the vanguard pass the word 
already down the rank, about the land 
which flows with milk and honey ; ye 
hear about the thousand hills covered with 
cattle, and valleys actually so thick with 
corn that they do laugh and sing. All 
this — all these, and more than our poor 
dreams have yet imagined, shall man at- 
tain. All shall be God's, and for the 
healing of the nations, or all shall sweep 
the world into the vortex of corruption 
and of death. 

Churchmen ! Ye Joshuas, ye leaders of 
God's host, which of these two alterna- 
tives shall ye adopt? In God's name, 
"Whither ? To God and Bight ! Amen. 
Thus shall we have our fruit unto holi- 
ness and the end everlasting life. 



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